The Badge
by la-chevreuille
Summary: Poetically enough, Uzumaki Naruto is a detective hunting the wild urban wilderness of Konohagakure for a serial killer--and Uchiha Sasuke, P.I., is after the same man. Humor/Horror/Suspense/Romance. Full summary inside!
1. Bloody Murder

**THE BADGE**  
Prologue: Bloody Murder  
by eggadshorace  
» Fandom: Naruto  
» Rating: M  
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Humor, Action/Adventure, Horror... Romance?  
» Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Officially undecided, but, the usual prospects

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Poetically enough, Uzumaki Naruto is a KCPD detective hunting in the wild urban wilderness of Konoha City for the serial killer who once destroyed his life… along for the ride are Uchiha Sasuke: PI, Sasuke's agency of misfits, Naruto's partner Gaara, medical examiner Chouji, P.A. Sakura, and many, many more. Meant to be a spin on every detective show and novel ever created.

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Chapter-specific warning: violent, gruesome death ahead, of an OC.

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**Prologue: Bloody Murder**

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"_Now, be a good girl, and hold still for me…"_

_She was on her stomach, writhing away from the darkness in his voice like a naked, blind worm, leaving a widening pool of blood behind her as she crawled. Tears tracked down her cheeks, through the blood and snot from her broken nose, and she made a tiny mewling whimper as his footsteps echoed behind her._

_Her throat was crushed and blood bubbled out of the corner of her mouth as she rasped out moans. She had no more teeth. Her ribs had punctured her lungs in multiple places; she'd been hamstrung. She could no more run than she could shriek as he grabbed for her._

_Her broken fingernails scrabbled uselessly against the woodgrain as he jerked her up by her hair, bowing her mangled, shredded body back so that her face was close to his._

_His eyes were crimson, the color of rosepetals and mourning. He held her close, like the lover he had been, and whispered to her tenderly._

"_My poor darling, but you're a mess. You really couldn't take it, could you, darling?" He gave her a little shake, face still loving. "I'll confess, it saddens me that I'm going to kill you."_

_She gurgled, and he stroked her face. "You know I must. I've ruined you for anyone else. How could you ever love another after I've loved you?" His hand stroked down her flattened chest, to the ruin between her legs. "No one could possibly compare._

"_Darling, let me have a small memento of our love." The hand ran back up her body and cupped her face. "To remember the times we shared."_

_Two fingers and a thumb loomed, filling her vision. Her world narrowed to a small, screaming pinprick, dull horror blooming like a black flower in her heart._

"_Give me your eyes, darling. I need them , and you shouldn't see anyone but me…"_

"_Gyah!_"

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Somewhere in Konoha City, Sasuke Uchiha woke with a jerk, hand clapped protectively over his left eye.

His harsh breathing was the only sound in the dark room, Tiffany-shaded lamp casting a dim golden glow over an ancient, scarred desk and worn leather chairs. A bottle of cheap tequila and half a lime lay warming, and a cup of coffee sat cooling, next to a camera and several empty film canisters.

His neck had a terrible crick in it from sleeping on his folded arms.

Sasuke stared blindly down at the pictures spread in a messy fan over his desk and waited while his heart calmed and his breathing slowed. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just another fucking daydream…

It took longer for his hand to come down from his eye. When it did, it reached for the tequila and poured another piss-yellow shot for its owner to knock back with a wince. And another. A third.

He choked a little on that one and coughed raggedly. While he wiped his mouth, from outside his glass-plated door there came the sound of footsteps. The knob turned, and the door opened, just a crack. Beyond the crack there was only darkness.

"Uchiha-san?"

He cleared his throat. "Go home, Karin." His voice was hoarse, tone wearier than he's intended.

"Why aren't_you_ home?" The door creaked open further, to reveal a sliver of a long fall of red hair and one brown eye that gleamed wetly for a moment in the lamp's glow. Sasuke shuddered, jamming his hands back through his hair.

"I've still got work."

"If you have work, then I do too."

"No. Go home."

Silence.

He said, "_Karin_." Harsher.

A pause.

"…all right."

The door closed. Her footsteps grew fainter, fainter, before they faded completely.

Sasuke was alone.

The two in the photographs looked up at him guiltily, the man almost apologetic as he straddled the younger woman who was not his wife in a wide hotel bed, clearly visible through the first-story window. People did the most stupid things…

Sasuke stroked the touchpad, and the laptop at his elbow whirred back to life, adding its sickly blue LCD to the lamp's feeble efforts. He sighed, cracked his knuckles in a long stretch behind his back, and, sparing another glance at the blurred face of the man he was going to ruin, began to type.

* * *

Somewhere across the city, Naruto swayed while sitting in his boxers on the edge of his bed, a party and the better part of the entire bar specialty list riding queasily in his system. It'd been a hard day. Tomorrow, if some fresh hell didn't rear its ugly head, would be better. Paperwork. Routine. All that good stuff.

He had a business card in his hand, but couldn't remember taking it out. The name and phone number on it were a source of constant pain and irritation for him. They had been for five years.

He turned it around and around in his fingers, staring at it as if trying to derive the secrets of the universe from its faded surface. It was used to this kind of treatment. There was hardly a day that went by that Detective Uzumaki didn't pull it out of his wallet and play with it, rolling it between his fingers, caught between ripping it into tiny pieces and taking it directly to a phone, calling that number, and screaming into the receiver for the rest of his life.

He never did either. He simply put it back in his wallet, and there it rested until the next weak moment.

There was a raised decal of a snake that had since been smoothed flat by the constant rub of fingers. Below that, ink had faded and creases had appeared to the point where all that was decipherable read something like, " asu e U i ha."

That was alright. He knew whose card it was.

* * *

Because it is statistically impossible for every resident of a large, multi-million person city to be homicidal, dying, drunk and/or just plain miserable, Public Prosecutor Sakura Haruno was eating cake and ice cream at her mother's 56th birthday party. She had purchased the gift—a tourmaline tennis bracelet with matching earrings—exactly thirty-two minutes before, and while her mother gushed she simply sat and smiled bemusedly with her cast resting comfortably on the tabletop.

Detective Shikamaru Nara was watching the Konohagakure Kunais beat the living crap out of the Shadow Shurikens, and, having yelled himself hoarse, could only croak, "Troublesome," while Detectives Inuzuka, Hyuuga, Yamanaka, and Aburame booed, threw popcorn at the screen, and in one case blushed becomingly. Dr. Chouji Akimichi preferred to eat his popcorn, thank you very much, and patted Hinata on the back sympathetically as the awful performance of their beloved Shurikens turned her face red.

Detective Gaara Sabaku, while mildly drunk, did not feel in the least bit homicidal for once. On a darker balcony of a club that _pulsed_ with neon, people and music, one very intoxicated reveler had tripped and landed on his lips. "Hey," the man purred, languidly wrapping his arms around Gaara's neck, it seemed, for support. "Name's Neji. Wanna?"

Those pale eyes, even when half-lidded and glazed, were positively magnetic. Gaara gave a rather predatory smile and said, "Let's."

And somewhere in the city, a tear of blood leaked out of an eyeless socket as a woman gave one last gurgle, and died.

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**A/N:** Nothing's very clear yet, is it? That's why it's a TEASER… it's supposed to make you want to read more. So? Do you want to? Tell me! First real chapter up soon!

Read? Review!


	2. The Badge and the Body

**THE BADGE**  
Chapter One: The Badge and the Body  
eggadshorace  
» Fandom: Naruto  
» Rating: M  
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Humor, Action/Adventure, Drama  
» Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Officially undecided, but, the usual prospects

Poetically enough, Uzumaki Naruto is a KCPD detective hunting in the wild urban wilderness of Konoha City for the serial killer who once destroyed his life… along for the ride are Uchiha Sasuke: PI, Sasuke's agency of misfits, Naruto's partner Gaara, medical examiner Chouji, P.A. Sakura, and many, many more. Meant to be a spin on every detective show and novel ever created.

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"The Badge" now has a poll, located on my profile page! Go vote!

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Chapter-specific warning: explicit description of a crime scene, possible inaccuracies regarding police procedure.

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**Chapter One: The Badge and the Body**

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What leads to this?

Blood painted the floor, walls and ceiling of the skyrise apartment in brilliant starbursts and blooms of crimson and scarlet, sprinkled and slashed and bucketed all over what had once probably been a stylish living room. Good furniture, nice rugs. Colors were a bit dull, beige and cream and white, but they matched the dark wood and arty wall prints. The view was excellent, if a bit misty through the drying splatter; the metal and glass sprawl of Konoha spread out to the horizon in all directions, interrupted only briefly by the gunmetal gray river, and the low, dense clouds reflected its winter colors.

He wasn't interested in the view.

Instead, he faced the center of the room, crouched next to what remained of the stylish apartment's owner. Her hair, artfully colored, lay in mats soaked with her own blood and vomit, her legs spread lewdly, her shredded back and buttocks resembling so much meat. Under his shoes, a rug squelched unpleasantly as he leaned to lift one stiffening arm with a gloved hand, examining the abraded wrists and bent nails. He frowned, fingering a charm bracelet with jeweled letters dangling. His hand groped at his side for an evidence bag.

"What? You want a donut?"

Naruto jerked. "Chouji?"

"Yeah?"

"When did—?" The noise around him crashed into his ears as he lost his concentration completely, and he turned on one knee to shoot an exasperated look at the medical examiner who hovered over his shoulder. "No, I do not want a damn donut. And what is this, the County Fair? A little respect, people!"

For being the rather messy scene of one young woman's death, the apartment had more of a carnivalesque atmosphere than a funerary one. Cops stood around, leaning on the walls and cradling cups of coffee, talking and gesturing animatedly as a colorful flow of EMTs, officers, and medtech crew wound in and out through the door. Bright yellow POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS was taped everywhere like so much confetti. Forenstic techs took pictures of everything, the random bright flashes like fireworks. They didn't miss much: not the mug on the table, the small cat statue on the windowsill, or the leftover microwave popcorn in a bowl. Plastic draped the people and the floor; Naruto himself wore a full coverall and now pulled at the itchy collar with a bloody finger, scowling. The place looked like a madhouse and smelled like a butcher's.

Chouji really did have donuts. He ate one now, white powder coating his chin and drifting to the floor, where it was absorbed into the multicolored puddle surrounding the body. Naruto could feel his blood pressure skyrocketing.

"Hey, dipshit! Have a thought for the integrity of the crime scene!"

"You don't get to call me names just 'cause we're friends," Chouji muttered as he finished and wiped his hands on his lab coat. He pursed his lips, and his tone was suddenly business-like as he snapped on his own gloves and said, "Temperature taken? Pictures done? Okay, people, let's flip her."

As Naruto and company got a good grip on the stiffening body, his partner wandered over from where he'd been admiring a particularly artistic blood splatter to watch, blank blue gaze meditative and hands deep in his black wool coatpockets. No coveralls for Detective Sabaku.

Chouji, at his side, said, "Ready, Uzumaki?"

"That's Detective Uzumaki to you. And yes."

Carefully, with the help of Chouji's many white-coated minions, they eased the woman onto her side, then her back.

"Damn." Gaara took a sip of his coffee.

Naruto felt strangely winded as he stared into the gory mess that was all that was left of this woman's face. Her nose was ruined, cartilage shining white in the harsh glow of the halogens. Her mouth was contorted into a rictus grin of fright, lipless and torn; but, worst of all were the eyes.

Or, should he say, the lack of eyes. _Oh dear god._

"Gonna puke," one of the techs breathed.

"Bugger off, then," Chouji said coolly, and cracked open his kit. He shot a look at the detective and spoke, voice firm but kind. "Naruto, you've been here for two hours, and it's not your job anymore. Go."

The technicians' camera flashes flickered like lightning in the darkening room. The EMTs appeared with their ominous black bag and stretcher. "Sure," Naruto heard himself say distantly. "Send me the screenings when you're done."

Somehow, he made it out of his coverall and into the quieter hallway. He ticked off his next actions on his fingers and out loud. "Witness statements—"

"Inuzuka's got it," his partner declared in a bored tone, rubbing his temple.

"The background check on the victim, informing the next of kin—"

"Aburame's got it."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Which leaves us, the actual primaries of the case, sitting around with our thumbs up our asses, waiting on toxicology and autopsy reports. Hell, no!"

Gaara gave him a flat stare, eyes in this light noticeably bloodshot. "But we still have to move in."

"Huh?"

"To our office."

Suddenly, the day seemed brighter, the air fresher—despite the fact that it was six pm on a cloudy Tuesday in December, on one of the most congested streets in Konohagakure--where even the noise pollution was life-threatening.

"Riiiight," Naruto sighed dreamily as they walked down the hall, toward the bank of elevators. "Our new, lovely, beautiful, magnificent private office, in our new, lovely, beau—"

"Shut up." Gaara poked the glowing elevator button with enough force to crack the plastic. "It's not private, we share it with four fucking other people. And it's _not_ new. It's a shitheap."

"Jesus Christ, who pissed in _your_ wheaties?" But Naruto's tone held laughter.

Gaara crumbled his paper cup and chucked it bad-temperedly at a garbage can, scowling as it missed. "I have the freakin' mother of all hangovers, I'm partners with an idiot, and this morning—" _I woke up in a puddle of my own drool with a phone number scrawled on my chest in glittery. Lavender. Eyeliner._

"This morning…?" Naruto prompted as the elevator dinged and the doors slid silently open.

"Nevermind," Gaara muttered darkly. He didn't know whether he was more upset it was glittery and purple, or because the numbers had been smeared too badly to make out.

"But, eyes…" Naruto trailed off. He stared blankly at the inexplicably ugly paisley wallpaper inside the elevator as the doors closed behind them and it began to glide downwards. His partner was somewhat surprised to see a tensed, haunted look cross his face.

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They paused outside the doors of the highrise, momentarily stunned into nonmovement by the icy December wind.

"Just wish it wasn't _eyes_. Damn it!" Naruto jammed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders.

Gaara, already starting to shiver and rub his hands, snapped, "I just wish you'd think about it someplace warmer!"

Naruto didn't respond. His eyes were hooded, focused somewhere inward and far, far away. There, or at the wide pothole in the middle of the street. A taxi darted around it, almost flattening a slow pedestrian. The resulting yell blended in with the sounds of a city at rush hour.

Still no reaction from Naruto. Gaara shrugged, and took the opportunity to tap out and light a cigarette, hands cupping to shield it from the wind. Automatically, Naruto flicked it out of his mouth and onto the sidewalk, refocusing on Gaara's sharp, "Did I ask you to be my mommy?"

"You need one," Naruto asserted, but he was still gazing absently into space.

"Did Uchiha need a mommy too, and you just weren't enough of a June Cleaver?"

Naruto's gaze sharpened instantly and snapped up to meet Gaara's, posture suddenly aggressive. "Shut up, Sabaku, you don't know a _damn_ thing about it!"

"Nor do I want to. Can we go now?" Gaara jerked a shoulder and pivoted to start walking back to the department issue waiting for them at the curb.

Naruto glared at his back, but settled for a muttered, "You're such a bastard," as he fell into step behind him. Gaara snorted.

"Now ask me if I care."

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Gaara was telling the truth.

It wasn't a new building; in fact, it was nearly eighty years old and looked it, the old brick face crumbling under layers and layers of skeletal ivy, inside the plaster cracking and wooden paneling black with age. It even smelled old, like dust and stale cigars, brass and rust and machine oil. Did spiderwebs have a smell?

The stray thought crossed Naruto's mind as he unloaded the last of his instant ramen into his new (old) desk drawer. The desk was one of six, arranged down the center of a room approximately twelve by twenty feet. Aburame and his ant farm were prominently displayed on the desk against the far wall, while Naruto slammed the drawer shut on its opposite across the room. Gaara leaned against him own, bare except for his nameplate, facing Naruto and butted up against Detective Hyuuga's. Hinata sat primly, fingers flying over the keyboard of her office set. Her face when she realized that she'd be stuck staring at Gaara every shift had been priceless.

Orange streetlight leaked in through the windows, so wide and tall (in the way of old industrial buildings) that the ceiling eclipsed them. The wall facing the bullpen was pierced by two more windows that looked out onto the rows of other desks. Someone had already drawn the blinds firmly shut on both sides of the room.

"This place sucks."

Three guesses as to whom.

Kiba, head bowed over a file, growled "Grow up, Sabaku."

"He has a point," Shino mused, twisting a pen through his fingers. "We were supposed to get an entirely new building. They had plans and everything," and here, he held up a finger. "One: _miles_ of glass, two: _real_ private offices for second-paygrade and above, three: _skylights_..." He sighed. "Instead, our budget lands us this: death by mold poisoning." He twirled in his chair, head tilted as he considered his surroundings over dark sunglasses. "I mean, what exactly would you call this paint color? Chartreuse?"

"Minty ice cream," Naruto offered, leaning back into his own desk.

"Pea soup," came Hinata's soft voice. She was chewing on her pencil now, eyes flicking back and forth rapidly over her screen.

"Vomit," said Gaara darkly.

"And these walls have more cracks showing than… the KC Plumbers Union."

"Now_ that_ sucks," Kiba muttered to his paperwork. "Make good jokes or make no jokes, Shin-chan."

Shino threw the pen at him. "That's Aburame-senpai to you, dogbreath."

"Fuck off."

"Well, _I_ like it," Naruto said firmly, crossing his arms. "It's nice. It has character."

"Spiderwebs," Hinata mumbled inarticulately around her pencil.

"Hey! Spiders are our friends!"

"What, are you in kindergarten?"

Naruto began to sputter out something, but his (brilliant, cutting) retort was swallowed by the rattle of the glass-paneled door as it was shoved open, revealing Ino supporting a towering pile of copypaper boxes.

"Move, move, move—!" she chanted as she strode blindly towards her own desk. "Move, mo—"

Kiba, struck by a sudden urge toward gallantry, sprung up and made a grab at the top two boxes. Ino charged forward, unable to see him. The resulting crash made all occupants of the room wince in union.

Ino, flat on her back under books and framed photos, yelled out, "Stupid motherfucker!" Pieces of paper floated down around her.

Kiba, hardly better off, groaned and yanked a sharpshooting trophy out from under himself. "Was just tryina hel..."

"Ah..." said Shino.

"..." said Kiba.

Ino raised her head slowly, staring with the fixed gaze of a predatory cat at the trophy Kiba held in his hand.

At first, nothing in particular seemed wrong. But, as everyone stared at the little bronzed man, it occurred to them that a sharpshooter generally had his arms extended, not bent down toward his body, where the shape of the gun and the position of his hands suggested that—

"MY TROPHY IS MASTURBATING!"

--the little bronzed man might be jacking off.

From there, an evening which otherwise might have been filled with productivity and casework degenerated into screams, pleas for mercy, and raucous laughter.

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Later, Naruto stumbled as he toed off his shoes in the foyer of his apartment, eyes gritty and mouth stretched in a wide, wide yawn. Bed, o glorious bed, your supplicant beseeches thee...

On cue, the telephone began to ring.

"Jus' a second!" he called, as if anyone could hear, and threw his bomber at the couch as he headed for the bedroom. The cradle was empty, and he cursed as scanned the chaotic, cramped room for the handset. The telephone continued to scold him, ringing eight times as he searched his overflowing bedside table, drawers, floor, desk, and hamper. He finally saw it lying just under the mattress and grabbed for it, hitting 'talk' and laying back on the floor as he cradled it against his ear. "I'm here."

"Where was it?" Sakura's tinny, exasperated voice filled his ear as he grinned tiredly and threw an arm over his eyes. She was quite familiar with his atrocious living habits.

"Under the bed. 'Sup?"

"Mom really liked the bracelet you picked out. I might not have to actually speak to her for another month."

Naruto's face scrunched. "What are you talking about? You love your mom." He stifled another yawn, and stretched all the way down to his toes, biting back a groan of pure sensory pleasure.

A brief silence. "Yeah. But..." and here she sighed, roughly. "She mentioned the Gillan case, again. Last night."

"...and?"

"You don't get it, do you, Naruto? She wants me to have a nice, safe job, like pediatrician—or, even better! Full-time mommy!" Sakura's tone was caustic. "She just can't leave it alone."

"That homicidal freak _did_ break your arm."

Now her voice was fierce. "But I—no, _we_—put him away, Naruto. You arrested him, I stood up in court and did my job, and now he's rotting in jail."

Naruto yawned again, hugely. His jaw popped. "Go, go, Team Uzumaki."

She laughed. "What's this 'Uzumaki' crap?"

"'Casue 'm the greatest," he mumbled, eyes drifting shut.

"You must really be tired, Naruto... you're hallucinating!"

"Har dee har."

A pause. "Goodnight, Naruto."

"Mmph?"

"Love you, too."

"Like a sister," Naruto muttered.

"Damn straight, loser." But her voice was soft. "See you tomorrow."

When the line went dead in his ear, Naruto heaved himself up and into bed, hitting the 'end' button and chucking the phone across the room. As he wriggled out of his shirt and jeans, the shape of his wallet pressed against his hand, and, for a moment, his lips thinned into a tight line.

_Eyes…_

Then he sent his clothes flying in the same direction as the phone and fell into sweet, blissful oblivion.

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**A/N:** As this chapter was Sasuke-less, Neji-less, and bad-guy-less, so shall the next be (mostly) Naruto-and-Company-less. So say I, the amazing eggadsHorace.

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Read? Review!


	3. The Gumshoe and the Ace

**THE BADGE**

Chapter Two: The Gumshoe and the Ace  
eggadshorace  
» Fandom: Naruto  
» Rating: M  
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Humor, Action/Adventure, Drama  
» Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Officially undecided, but, the usual prospects

Poetically enough, Uzumaki Naruto is a KCPD detective hunting in the wild urban wilderness of Konoha City for the serial killer who once destroyed his life… along for the ride are Uchiha Sasuke: PI, Sasuke's agency of misfits, Naruto's partner Gaara, medical examiner Chouji, P.A. Sakura, and many, many more.

Meant to be a spin on every detective show and novel ever created.

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Chapter Two: The Gumshoe and the Ace

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The offices of _The Konoha Tribune _were a far cry from the dilapidated precinct bullpen of Detective Uzumaki and company; as the best-selling, fastest-growing paper in the entire Konohagakure prefecture, the Trib had both the money to throw around and a reason to expand. It currently occupied the top five floors of the classic downtown Embassy building, and had been featured in several architectural digests for its sweeping expanses of glass and chrome, wide-open floorplan and… _unique_ art pieces. Although the last was mostly because of the questionable tastes of the owner and editor-in-chief.

Even at seven-thirty in the morning it was a hive of activity, shouts and footsteps echoing through all five floors by way of a dramatically deep well; while the lowest floor remained solid, each successive floor had a larger portion of its middle square-footage missing, so that the view from the fifth was a dizzying sixty-foot drop through the constant movement of the floors below.

Suspended in the open space was a large hanging sculpture, untitled by the artist. It was a red and yellow tangle of wire and what appeared to be various bits of kitchen waste, although no one could get close enough to be sure. Weekly in-house drawings were held to temporarily put a name to what the artist had termed ineffable; this week's selection was "Friday Night Pizza-Maker"(1). Last week's was "Christine, if I catch her with my granola again".

He usually found it more interesting to watch the swirling patterns and rivers of frenetic color that anxious reporters, copyists, and editors made from above. The noise could be deafening, the presses themselves adding a dull heartbeat that even soundproof glass couldn't muffle. People came in cursing, struggling out of their hats and coats to put their fingers to the keys as quickly as possible while cradling phones to their ears, and others threw their phones back down and dashed out the doors, coats on their arms and hats on backwards. That was the rhythm. Some crisis down in Fashion echoed up the well, as well as a frustrated bellow from the direction of Sport editor's office. Normal. A perfectly normal, rowdy Wednesday morning.

So why did he feel like punching someone?

Neji Hyuuga sat, ancient mug of coffee in hand, and willed his in-box to sprout something. Anything. He'd cover traffic, B&Es in the suburbs, parking meter fraud. Throw the dog a goddamn _bone_, already. While his floor buzzed and frothed around him, he sat immobile and watched his closest coworkers pound out their life's ambitions, eyes glaring at screens while their fingers flew over abused keyboards rubbed shiny with use.

"Tenten?"

"Hn," one such fellow reporter grunted, hunched over her copy with a red pen in one hand, Blackberry in the other.

"How old do you think this coffee is?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Well—"

"Busy. Go bug someone else."

He sighed, dramatically. "But everyone else is busy, too. And I'm _bo—_"

She lifted her head slightly, glaring at him with one narrowed eye. "Don't. Say it."

He shrugged. "Fine. But I am, you know."

"No one cares."

He smirked. "Still a little hungover from yesterday?"

She groaned and grabbed for her own mug. "God, don't remind me. That headache was fricking Biblical. But then," and here she snorted as she gulped tea. "_I_ didn't get lucky. It's a proven fact that mindless sex prevents hangovers."

"It was certainly mindless," Neji murmured. "Hot jungle monkey mindless." He'd been feeling a little desperate, a little crazy, like an animal released from captivity. So he got a lot drunk and, as evidenced by the toothmarks that decorated most of his body, had enjoyed himself thoroughly. He felt a little flash of arousal remembering just _how_ much.

Tenten waved a hand. "Please, spare me the details. Don't you have_ anything_ to do?" Then she bit her lip and thought, _stupid_.

He set his mug down with a snap and pointed accusingly at his innocent black plastic inbox. "You see this box? This box should be full. It should be overflowing with murders and muggings and courtroom drama. But it isn't. Why?" He slammed an open hand next to the mug. "And this desk, it should be covered in research material and law dictionaries. Why is it still clean?"

Tenten cleared all guilt from her mind and snapped, "Can it. It's your first day back."

"It's already eight o'clock. You've had two stories come in."

"Go cry to your Pulitzer."

"Tenten, you know they decide that in April; I only got nominated."

"Then try your first one, dumbass!"

"But I lost it."

She set down the copy and rubbed her forehead. "You lost your Pulitzer coin? You _lost_ it? After all the crap you pulled to get that story on Yakuza or whatever—"

"Zabuza."

"Like I said, whatever. Did you lose the ten thousand bucks that came with it?"

"Just ask the monthly payment on my Porsche."

"What a waste of—hey, what?" Her Blackberry beeped at her. "Shit. Okay—" She pointed a finger at Neji, eyes fierce. "One, no pity parties for Mr. Pulitzer winner and second-time nominee. Two, after this _last, _most_ recent_ brush with death, busting open Ashitaka—"

"Akatsuki."

"_Whatever_! You should have taken a longer rest, and you know it. Everyone knows it, including your boss, and that is why the in-box is empty. End of story. Go home." She stood.

"Tenten-san! Another assignment awaits your urgent, youthful attention!"

Tenten turned slowly, eyes baleful as Rock Lee strode up to her with a manila folder, grin and green spandex blinding. "No! No! A thousand times, no! _Do you have any idea how much work I have right now_?"

Lee's grin didn't dim. "Six stories, two of which are due tonight. But nonetheless, we must strive for youthful vitality and springtime spirit in our work!"

"No!"

Tenten spun on her glittery lavender heel (it was her favorite color) and marched off. Lee called, "I'll put this on your desk for you!" She flipped him the bird.

"Lee. I'll take it." Neji couldn't go home. He was sick of his house, of 'protective custody' that was really house arrest and police tails following him everywhere. It had been three months since his byline appeared under the blazing script, _Akatsuki Ringed_. He was sick of hiding.

"Ah—Neji-san—"

But Neji had already jerked the file out of his hands and was eagerly spilling the contents onto his annoyingly spotless desk, pawing through the reports (murder, single female victim, no suspects) and glossy photos with something akin to glee.

"What's this crap?" he crowed, looking at yesterday's pitifully brief copy. "Just because it happened four hours before deadline doesn't mean you can print whatever shit spews out of someone's computer." He cracked his knuckles with a happy sigh, glancing up at Lee's worried face. "Weren't you saying something about youthful vitality and spirit? Get lost and let me work."

"It's only that Gai-sensei and I worry about you, Neji-san," Lee intoned solemnly. "If you wish to work, I will certainly not halt your youthful endeavors. But Gai-sensei has advised you before to be sensible, and you have ignored him." _Just like you're ignoring me_, he thought as Neji jerked and suddenly stared intently at a photo of the building where the woman was found.

"Hmm? Yeah, sure." He shook his head slowly, blooming wry disbelief written large on his face.

"Neji-san?"

"Jesus, it's a small world," he murmured, stroking the scowling, printed face of one redheaded detective, his eyes trailing to the caption.

"Hey there, Detective Sabaku," he whispered.

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"Bud'zdarov." (2)

"Shut up, Kakashi!"

"You should call me 'Lieutenant Kakashi-sensei, sir'."

"Like hell!"

(3)

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The Sasuke Uchiha of late Wednesday morning was nearly unrecognizable as the same Sasuke of Monday night. He'd sobered up, shaved, gotten some sleep, and was dressed his 'client-meeting' outfit—slacks and sport jacket. The slacks were longer to hide the fact that he wore black motorcycle boots instead of shoes, and under his arm he carried a sleek black helmet.

The Uchiha Detective Agency was on the second floor of commercialized brownstone in a quiet little row of commercialized brownstones just like it, with a small bookstore underneath it and a ballet school to one side. Once up the stairs, there was only a very sorry potted plant, and a door with a large gold snake etched on the glass.

He jiggled the door handle, sighed, and began to pat himself down, searching for the keys. "Let me get that," a deeper voice said from behind him, and Jugo, camera slung over his shoulder, stepped forward with his own keys. "Where's Karen?"

"Considering that she was supposed to open the office at eight today, that is a very good question." Sasuke, stepping into the room, looked over at the answering machine and sighed. "Some secretary; eleven missed calls! And there's a client meeting today."

Without comment, Jugo dumped his gear next to desk and sat, opening the appointment book and booting the slim computer. "Now, would this be Cheating-Husband or Embezzler we're talking about?"

"Cheater."

"Ah. That guy had the hairiest ass."

Sasuke's lip quirked a quarter-inch to the right, and he sat in one of the client chairs in front of the receptionist desk. Behind him, the door bounced open again.

"I'm here and so's the grub!" announced Suigetsu. He glanced around with a puzzled expression. "Hey, where's Bitchy?"

"Your guess is as good as ours," Sasuke said softly.

"What did you get?" asked Jugo, then paused, hand going dramatically to his head. "Wait—I'm getting a vision—"

"Sushi!" he and Sasuke said at the same time. Suigetsu pouted, a decidedly unattractive look on his thin face.

"So what? Don't you like sushi?"

Sasuke started the messages and began to write down the particulars, while his photographer and office gofer bantered. Surprisingly, a number were from the day before as well as earlier that morning, but none of them were the, hmm, Cheating-Husband client. He said as much.

"Aahs ird," said Suigetsu with his mouth full.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow, and the boy flushed. "Ah _sai'_," and here he swallowed, massively. "That's weird."

"Call her," said Jugo, gesturing with his chopsticks. "She should know, so if she and he and still, you know, she can get tested for…things. Some of those girls were just, hmm." He was blushing a little, and glared at the smirk on Suigetsu's face. "What?"

"Nooothing." Suigetsu poked him with his foot and managed another impressive mouthful. "Yo'r' jus' f'nny."

"Her number?" Sasuke asked politely as Jugo sputtered. The man, still grumbling, flipped through the appointment book and handed it to his boss, returning to his meal in sullen silence. Suigetsu filled it with chatter and teasing as Sasuke dialed the cell number and waited. The voice recording was simple, and somehow sweet.

"Hi! You've just missed me, and I'll call right back! Leave a number!"

"Shiki-san (4), this is Uchiha Sasuke. Please call at your earliest convenience concerning your appointment." He gently set the receiver back in its cradle, and sighed.

"No answer?"

"None. This is strange," he thought out loud, steepling his fingers. "She's been calling us at least once a day for several weeks, and yet hasn't called since early Monday. Very strange."

"No appointment means no paycheck, and no paycheck means no sushi," Suigetsu whined. "This is terrible!"

"What could have happened?" Jugo said, face worried. "That poor woman. Maybe a family crisis?"

The phone rang.

The three of them stared at it, then at each other.

Jugo began to reach for it, but Sasuke lifted it, put it to his ear and said, "Uchiha here."

There was a brief silence on the other end, and then, "Uchiha Sasuke?"

"Yes."

"…hot damn."

Sasuke brought the phone away from his ear, stared at it as if it had just farted in his ear, and then gingerly brought it back.

"Moshimoshi! Moshimoshi! Hey, Sasuke, are you still there? "

"Detective Inuzuka, is there a reason you're answering my client's phone?"

"Client, huh? What are you, some kind of high-class rent boy?"

Sasuke glanced at his attentive audience of employees, then grabbed the receiver and cradle and walked to his office, cords trailing behind him. "I've been called that, yes. But I'm actually a private detective."

Kiba laughed as Sasuke firmly shut the door on Suigetsu and Jugo's confused faces. "A private dick, huh? Got a Glock and a trench coat?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Jaysus, it's been, what? Three years?"

"Five."

"Five fucking years, and suddenly my evidence bag is vibrating and piping out "Singing in the Rain". You should see this cell phone; it's got, like, pink rhinestones and shit."

"I've seen it." Sasuke sat heavily at his desk, fingers drumming on the cool surface. "Will we eventually circle around for the reason you have my client's things?"

"Sorry, Private Dick, but your client in stone dead. Bagged her Monday night."

"Ah," Sasuke winced, closing his eyes. He hated trying to get paychecks out of estates. "That fits. She was calling here every day, sometimes twice, but for the last two, nothing."

"Is that so?" There was a rustling of paper in the background, and Kiba's tone became subtly more… cop-like. There wasn't another word. "And would you like to tell me, Uchiha-san, exactly why our lovely lady in the morgue was consulting a P.I.?"

"I wouldn't mind. If you tell me why she's dead."

"Can't."

"Mmmhmm." Sasuke leaned as far back in his chair as it would go, a small smile on his face. "How about we make a deal—your case files for mine."

"How about I slap you with obstruction?" Sasuke blinked, surprised. Kiba's tone was suddenly a little too venomous to fit the conversation.

"Let me make things a little clearer, Uchiha-san. We at the Konohagakure police department, ninth precinct, have a very messily dead young woman currently rotting in the fridge, and no one heard, saw or so much as fuckin' _smelled_ anything. I would really hate to throw an old buddy-in-blue in jail, but to put this away I'd do it without blinking. Got it?"

"I understand. I'm not looking to be a dickhead or interfere with the investigation; I just don't want to be left out of the loop. Got_ that_, Inuzuka?"

A snort. "Yeah. Same cold bastard as always. Whatcha got?"

"Husband was cheating on her with a new girl every week, mostly professionals (5). I've got 8x10 glossies."

Kiba made a slam-dunk sound. These mood swings were one of the reasons Sasuke had never really liked him. "Score. Anything else?"

"The woman was paranoid, compulsive. Called us at all hours, combed through and took pictures of his things religiously and sent us the film every couple of days. She kept saying that someone was watching her; she thought it was her husband, spying on her like she was spying on him, but it got so bad that I wondered if it was a mental illness." Sasuke shrugged, forgetting Kiba couldn't see him. "I only knew her for month, month and a half. She paid well."

There were some 'mmhmm' noises and the sound of scribbling. "God, this is great," the man muttered on the other end of the line. "First lead of the case goes to: Inuzuka!"

"Even snitches get money."

"Yeah, yeah. It's not like it's a hardship to show you the case files, however badly the Chief would bust my balls if she found out. There's nothing to them but scene description, 'cause nothing's come back from the lab yet. If you want the tech stuff, you have to bribe Chouji by yourself."

"Consider it done."

"Whatever. I wonder it Chouji even remembers you."

"_You_ remembered me."

"Yeah, because you were a monumental asshat and still managed to do your job." Kiba gave him the department's fax and address, and Sasuke gave him the agency's. An uneasy silence hung for a moment.

"Ah, Sasuke…"

"Yes?"

"… Naruto's fine, in case you were wondering. And, he's one of the primaries on the case."

Sasuke, gently, hung up on him.

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The final rays of the setting sun fell like lead on his closed eyes, stretching in bars across a dim, quiet room that was mostly bed and snarled white sheets. He stretched, or tried to, but the owner of the leg and arm wrapped around him curled in tighter, trapping him against a warm, naked body. He looked over his shoulder and smirked.

"And I'm supposed to be the lazy one."

With her face buried in his back, his lover's only comment sounded like, "Mrglph."

He laughed softly, drawing in the smells of clean linen, lemon furniture polish, and _her_ that haunted the room. His own room, which he hadn't returned to in days, was mildly redolent of week-old pizza and socks. He preferred this.

If Shikamaru woke up at home, it meant he was alone.

"Oi, Lieutentant."

Nothing. He rolled onto his back, tsking as she turned to bury her face in the pillow next to him.

"Hey! Temari!"

A very sexy, very annoyed face lifted up, and Temari propped her chin on his shoulder. "Wha'?"

"We're on third shift," he whispered, suddenly dazzled. "We should get moving."

"Hn. It's still early." She nuzzled her face into his arm, warm hand rubbing pleasantly down his chest. "We've got time." She snuggled more fully onto him, putting her head under his chin and sighing as she slid her leg over his waist.

"The sun is setting," he pointed out, reluctantly, as her weight pressed him further down into that soft, soft mattress. "And we— gah!"

Temari laughed as he wiggled underneath her teasing fingers, moving to straddle him completely. He tried and failed to grab her wandering hands, body quickly overheating and a red blush staining his cheeks. "Lieutentant—!"

"We have enough time for a quickie, don't we?" She purred throatily into his ear as she stroked him and her body covered his. "And then a shower quickie."

"Any…thing you want. God!" She'd impaled herself, roughly, and chuckled as she bowed back to ride out the first sensations of him inside her.

She moaned. "Ahn, that's _nice_. You're my favorite alarm clock, Shika."

Shikamaru, hands vised on her thighs as they started a rhythm together, panted out, "Glad to be of service."

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* * *

I AM NOT A HET WRITER! (glares at the above passage) I'm going to make a short interlude between chapters three and four detailing Gaara and Neji's encounter at the nightclub, just because I am soooooo not a het writer. YAOI POWER! (Edit: I lied. It's a Naruto/Sasuke short, from when they were at the police academy. Name: 'Wet'. Go read it.)

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**Index:**

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Gumshoe is slang for Private Investigator/Detective. Ace is the reporter up first for assignments.

1 – "Friday Night Pizza-Maker" - Slang for salarymen who drink too much after work on Friday and then throw up on the subway.

2 – "Bud'zdarov" - Everybody learn Russian! This means, "Bless you."

3 – (Sneezing) - You know how it goes; someone's talking about someone, and the person being talked about sneezes…

4 – "Shiki" - can mean 'demon-corpse' in Japanese.

5 – "Professionals" - As in professional prostitutes.

**Days:**

Prologue: Monday Night

Chapter One: Tuesday

Chapter Two: Wednesday

Chapter Three: Also Wednesday…

**Desks:**

Wall(Naruto)--(Gaara)(Hinata)--(Ino)(Kiba)--(Shino)Wall

**Cast of Characters:**

Murderer: -?

Victim(s): Shiki Kaede-san

Detectives (by partner): Naruto Uzumaki and Gaara Sabaku, Kiba Inuzuka and Shino Aburame, Ino Yamanaka and Hinata Hyuuga, Shikamaru Nara (and Temari Sabaku)

Lieutenants (by partner): Temari Sabaku (and Shikamaru Nara), Kakashi Hatake and -?

Chief: -?

Reporters: Tenten, Rock Lee, Maito Gai and Neji Hyuuga

Uchiha Detective Agency: Sasuke Uchiha, Suigetsu Hozuki, Jugo, Karin

Medical Examiner's Staff: Chouji Akimichi

* * *


	4. Dead Doc on the Rue Morgue

**THE BADGE**

Chapter Three: Dead Doc on the Rue Morgue  
eggadshorace  
» Fandom: Naruto  
» Rating: M  
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Humor, Action/Adventure, Drama\  
» Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Sasuke/Naruto, Neji/Gaara, Shikamaru/Temari… nobody else, yet.

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Chapter specific warnings: editing slips! Just tell me where there's a particularly awful passage and I'll fix it. I hate it when misspellings and weird word choices ruin the dramatic moment as much as anyone…

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Chapter Three: Dead Doc on the Rue Morgue

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Sometime near sundown, the sun was prematurely obscured by wintry storm clouds as a predicted front moved across the prefecture. The day died in a sudden soft flurry, fat flakes falling like ash from a sky the color of an old bruise. The snow was a dirty shade of off-white, and in the street it was churned to the color and consistency of drying concrete. Everywhere, a thick, muffling blanket of grey draped the city like misery made corporeal.

It fit his pisser of a mood just fine.

Gaara had spent the first few hours of the day regathering witness statements, more because he was at a loss than because he thought Inuzuka (originator of the statements) was a useless fuck—though he did. Naruto had focused on the victim and her life before her death, begining a long, slow comb through everything from real estate records to university transcripts. Inuzuka, the aforementioned useless fuck, had gone down to paw through the victims effects from the crime scene. Aburame'd had fun (not, but more fun than Gaara) building a little cardboard model of the crime scene, complete with victim outline and splatter pattern; Buggy was surprising artistic that way.

The four of them had cooled their heels for the better part of the day in a little windowless room in the departmental records building, noting and marking and filing for future reference until Gaara was ready to kill and Naruto had ordered him to scram if he wasn't going to do anything more useful than scowl. Predictably, about that time the 'break' had come through, and Inuzuka had bailed to chase it. For being the one to catch the first real lead, the bastard got to track down the cheating husband. For being available in the wrong place at the wrong time, Gaara got a stack of photos of said cheating husband fornicating with twenty different girls and driving directions to the nearest red light district.

Five hours later, he'd gotten a lot of raucous laughter, flashed body parts and death threats, but no leads. He'd been about to throw in the towel, or maybe start practicing his police brutality on the next thing that touched his ass, when a faceless figure had crooked a finger from a dark doorway that smelled like cigarettes and cloves. Ten minutes and fifty dollars later, he walked out of the building with a single crisp black business card stuck down the front of his pants. Blazoned across its shiny surface was stylized script reading, 'Delilah Escorts', a phone number and an improbably large-breasted woman.

It was currently up in the air whether the card had been worth a). the invitation to come back some other time, b). meeting that invitation's issuer and c). the issuer's mode of presentation--any one of which might have scarred him for life.

As he'd began trudging through the glop that pretended to be snowfall to his car, he'd called Naruto, only to hear that the cheating husband had a solid alibi—he happened to have been, and currently remained, in Tahiti of all places. He'd read off the escort service's number to his partner, then hung up on him after barely—barely—resisting the urge to throw his phone into traffic.

He hoped the fucker wore trunks instead of a thong, because damn, the man had a hairy ass.

As snow blew up his hood and slowly soaked into his shoes, Tahiti sounded like fucking _paradise_. Cold made Gaara sluggish and stupid, like a barely-awakened animal that should have been hibernating. He still wasn't used to bitter Konoha winter, even three years after leaving Suna. Ah, Suna. Even in winter people complained about the heat.

His car took a few tries to start, and the mild swell of homesickness was driven from his mind for the next hour as he battled the elements, other drivers and one ballsy motorcyclist to make his way to the precinct house. The radio was on scan.

"—afraid we can expect record-breaking lows this—"

"IIIIIIII saw Daddy kissing Saaaaanta Claus, underneath the misel—"

"—course there won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime, IT DOESN'T—!"

"-t'll nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives! These wond—"

"—Winter Wonderland!"

Gaara snorted. It looked like someone had upended a giant, dirty-sock-flavored slushie all over downtown. A winter wonderland, indeed.

Caught at a red light, he cursed and drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel while the heater blasted. They'd know more when the fucker's wife's body actually finished its time on the table, something Akimichi swore would be done by tonight. But unless Fatboy pulled some truly fabulous physical evidence from the soup of samples taken, no one had jack shit except a dead neurotic woman who lived alone, was separated from her husband, had no children, few friends, and no immediate family. Apparently, she'd never even met many of her neighbors. No one heard anything. No one remembered anything. And an investigation couldn't happen without anything to investigate.

He pulled into the underground carpark at about eight thirty, only to see that all three of his fellow detectives' personal cars were missing. He sat at the wheel for a moment, counting to ten and imagining them all roasted on spits like the pigs they were, before shoving open the door with a groan and climbing out, slamming it behind him with effort force to send the accumulated snow on his roof sliding down to coat his windshield. He glared at it, and felt compelled to threaten, "You sure as hell better not be there when I get back."

A short lift ride later, he was walking onto the homicide unit's floor, where the only living soul appeared to be a rookie officer manning the receptionist's desk. If the guilty way his head shot up and the fast flick of his fingers to the escape button was any indication, he was either playing an online RPG or looking at porn.

As Gaara strode toward him and the dim door to the bullpen, the young man stuttered out, "H-hello, Detective Sabaku." Helimited a piece of yellow notebook paper. "Detective Uzumaki left th—"

He flinched as Gaara yanked the paper away from him, then read it, then crumbled it in his fist with a sound of disgust.

"Did my fuckface of a partner say anything _useful_? Like when he might come back?"

"Ah, er, no, sir. I got the impression he wasn't, though. Coming back, I mean."

Rainbows. Butterflies. The things his therapist told him to imagine when this red haze started to settle over his vision.

"That's just great," he ground out. "Might I also ask where the hell everyone else is?" There. That was ten times more diplomatic than what he'd _wanted _to say.

"Well, we have some pretty severe weather coming through. The Chief dismissed most of them, I think, and the third shift never came in, so I guess she dismissed them too…"

Gaara muttered something uncomplimentary about their chief—under his breath. Just in case she was anywhere around. Then he shook his head and started towards the darkened offices. The officer piped up, "Uh, detective? I was going to be locking up soon, so—"

"Then lock up."

"But, the alarm—"

Gaara whirled back. "I'll arm the fucking alarm myself if I fucking have to! Shut the fuck up!"

People had warned this particular officer about Detective Sabaku before, not the least credible of which being the detective's own sister, Lieutenant Sabaku. Something about dead kittens, if he recalled correctly. It was enough to cow him into a very tiny, "Yes, sir."

Vaguely disappointed, Gaara stared the poor man down a few more seconds, then turned and continued into the offices.

The institutional-grade clock tick-ticked loudly, echoing off the tiled floor and darkened windows. His boots made an authoritative counterpart, thump-thump-thump down the hallway and across the main room. The desks were indeed deserted, with the only illumination cast by the occasional screensaver and the red glow of the 'EXIT' signs.

There was, however, a yellow light shining through the slats of his office's blinds.

Gaara slowed, then stopped, lifting a hand to rest it gingerly on the doorknob. Not sure what instinct or emotion drove him, he eased his other hand over the grip of his police-issue and turned the knob as silently as he could, until the door cracked open.

A man sat bent over Gaara's desk, files spread out over the entire surface, a notebook out, reading avidly. In the lamp's weak glow, his face was defined sharply in light and shadow, angular and masculine. There was a pen in his dark hair, keeping it up in a kind of twisty… bun thing. That hair… that _face_… A sudden thought of how that same face looked twisted in passion, how that hair felt around his fist, rocked Gaara back on his heels. He licked his lips and whispered, "Shit."

The man looked up.

Gaara's pulse jumped once, hard. Those pale, pale eyes locked on his with all the intensity of lasers, and small, knowing smirk graced the man's mouth. When he spoke, it was silken and intimate as a lover's.

"Welcome back, Detective Sabaku."

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You wouldn't think so to see her now, but that motorcycle was his baby.

Sasuke hadn't grown up tinkering with cars and such like some teenage boys did, but had taken to it with a vengeance once loosed from his upperclass upbringing and any expectations he might have had to carry on his family name. He'd personally sweated over nearly every inch of his girl's custom body, primed, sanded and painted her smooth black shell himself in one marathon 48-hour session, and kept her locked up tighter than the agency itself, in a garage on the east side. Some of his best friends were mechanics for that reason only—he loved his bike too much to trust a stranger with her.

Taking her out on a night like tonight was idiocy bordering on suicide—and he'd be cleaning her off tomorrow with lambskin and tearful apologies—but he wanted what Chouji knew.

He wanted to see that body.

The streets were a biker's nightmare, nothing but slush and salt, the drivers insane or homicidal or both; one car he recognized as a plainclothes (1) nearly broadsided him racing a red light, but he skirted around it and kept moving. Wearing leather and with the wind whipping snow in horizontal sheets, he slowly froze to his seat. He wore unrelieved black, head to toe, and on a black bike he became a shadow invisible against sooty backdrop the night. The city unfolded around him, a funhouse maze of ice, traffic and noise that he fought through using streets and alleys and sidewalks indiscriminately. He almost didn't notice when his beloved girl's sides scraped bumpers and brick, when her tires squealed on the slick pavement and her motor choked on a roar as he revved through an intersection.

He needed to see that body.

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Kiba was slow as hell, but as the storm rolled in a knock had come on the agency's door. When Sasuke answered it, the detective himself had been standing there, slouching with his hands crammed nonchalantly in his pockets; he'd surveyed the surroundings with a puppy's curious eyes. "Saaay, this isn't bad at all. Nice digs, Sasuke."

Under Jugo and Suigetsu's questioning gaze, Sasuke had felt compelled to say, "This is Detective Inuzuka, of the Konohagakure ninth precinct. Play nicely," he'd added as he'd sensed the subtle tension in their expressions. It needed to be said, because neither his photographer nor his sushi-loving office minion held particularly high opinions of the long arm of the law. Jugo, because he had a tendency to drink and then attempt mass murder. Suigestu because as far as Sasuke knew, until the boy had followed him out of Oto two years ago he'd spent his entire life in that Branch Davidian atmosphere (2).

"I wouldn't play with him if you paid me," Suigetsu'd muttered under his breath, but he'd subsided when Sasuke shot him a look. Oto had also instilled in Suigetsu a rather disturbing tendency to refer his extracurricular (read illegal) activities as 'playtime'.

The way the boy had been playing with the agency's long, lethal-looking letter-opener should have tipped him off, but the apparently oblivious Kiba had paced forward to thrust a thin manila folder at Sasuke, and pulled just as quickly back. "Sorry, no pictures. And I would love to stay and chat, but I've got to convict or clear the husband before he decides to skip Tahiti." His hand had found the door knob and he'd begun pulling the door closed behind him while still speaking. "Thanks for the tip. Ta-ta, then!"

He'd given a mock salute, and slammed the door. Sasuke'd immediately held out his hand for the letter-opener and slit the envelope corner to corner, tossing it away while he'd scanned the contents. Read the details in that hasty scrawl he remembered from their school days.

He needed to see that body.

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It was half a nightmarish hour later when Sasuke pulled in to the near-deserted parking lot. A lone streetlamp shone a dirty orange, illuminating the handsome bricked face and attractive panels of the inset door of the building, and little else. He avoided it; at this time of night, the action was in back, where the night shift did a brisk trade in death. After he'd opened his saddle and removed two heavy paper bags, it was to the back he went, barely noticing the the day's build-up of dirty snow and the still rapidly falling sleet he slogged through.

The doors here were glass and steel, the floors inside and out smooth concrete. It was uninviting, industrial, and above all practical. This side of the morgue was not about consoling grieving families and public relations—it was about the dirty business of hauling bodies. There was something preternatural about the cool silence that closed around him once those glass doors closed. The silence, the loading bays, the sheer matter-of-factness of the whole thing had spooked him, back when he was a rookie cop and had had no idea, _no idea_ that there really were things worse than death. He pulled off his helmet as he walked, heavy footsteps the only thing audible in the whole of the building. Just him and the dead men.

As he turned to an open stairwell and descended, he began to discern from the general oppressive quiet the faint strains of music from somewhere in the depths of the building. As he descended further, the strains became clearer, and finally resolved themselves into the 'GI Jive'. Mystified, he continued walking.

Around another corner, and there she sat, beautiful in her familiarity. Horn-rimmed glasses, pearls, sweater set in soft pink with nails to match, hair as white as a cotton seed. Twice as fluffy.

"'baa-chan," he murmured, and she looked up from her magazine with the openly surprised, radiantly glad face of a child.

"Oh, my," she said. "Oh, _my_. Come here, just come here and let me _look_ at you, you _darling_ boy!" She held out her arms and he moved closer, letting her grasp his face in her soft, wrinkled hands and kiss him wetly on each cheek. "I haven't seen this face in years, it feels like!"

"It hasn't been that long, 'baa-chan," he lied, smiling down at her. Her memory was poorer than most, but she'd been doing her job so well for so long she was as much a part of the lifeless halls of the morgue as the florescent lighting. The article she'd been reading was on homemade taffy.

"Well, it sure has seemed so to this poor old woman, Detective Uchiha. You'll plum near break my heart if you don't come around more often than this, you terrible thing." She kissed him again, then twice for good measure, and released him to pat at her hair. "But I suppose you only came to bother poor Dr. Akimichi."

"I have something for him." He held up the bags. "If he's here, we'll talk. If not… I'd be just as happy to spend the whole night here with you," he said gallantly. She laughed, and a tinge of happy pink came to her withered cheek.

"The things you'll say, detective! But you know that boy. Of course he's still here, even when I've closed up shop upstairs and moved my kit and caboodle down here. You know," she whispered, eyes twinkling. "The two of us have a contest now, and one day I'll beat him. I've told him time and time again that he spends too much time here with his patients." Patients. That had always been her word for the dead of the morgue, even when she'd been a little younger and a lot sharper in his first days as a detective in the ninth precinct. "Well, I said to him, Doctor! If you won't go home at a decent time, neither shall I!"

Sasuke saw that she'd made one corner of the otherwise sterile reception desk her own, with framed pictures, a tiny black and white television, her knitting and a small ceramic frog.

She sighed, dramatically. "I keep hoping he'll feel sorry for this poor old gal, but he's been horrible—he hasn't let me win once!" He chuckled for her, and she tittered in response. "I'll admit, you caught me just as I was leaving. I've been watching the weather, and it's getting more and more terrible by the moment!"

He was getting restless now, but he smiled for her sake and made small talk, until a door being banged open and footsteps could be heard from the corridors behind them.

"Oh, that'll be Bill. My grandson?" she added at Sasuke's inquiring look. "When I saw the weather report, I called. He'll take me home."

"Then I'll say goodbye, 'baa-chan." He leaned down and kissed her cheek, smelling baby powder and Chanel, and she swatted playfully at him with a pleased, "Oh, you."

He left her humming and gathering her things as the footfalls grew louder, and he left with a smile. He had successfully charmed the dragon who guarded the gates, and he met with no more obstacles on his way to the wizard's lair.

The old woman was a spark of life that didn't belong in this place. The true soul of the building surrounded him now: stainless steel, white walls, glass and chrome. Timeless. Seasonless. Cool; not cold, but with a creeping chill. The morgue gave the feeling of a place resting deep, deep under the earth; the bright, cheerless lights that strung the windowless hallways were partially dimmed here, and the corridor became tunnel-like. A series of darkened offices, labs, and examination rooms interrupted the smooth hallway at regular intervals, and Sasuke might have been traveling in circles for all the sameness that surrounded him.

He spotted a light, faint, shining through the crack of an open door, and unconsciously his pace took on a predatory alertness. He put his hand on the knob, inhaled, then pulled it open.

Chouji stood alone in the middle of the room, round figure masked under layers of plastic and latex, and busily sewed up an unfortunate cadaver the same color and texture as a dead elephant with quick, efficient tugs. To the side, another smaller corpse waited its turn, still covered in a long white sheet.

"We're closed," he said shortly, without looking up. His face was hidden and his voice muffled behind a mask, but the examiner sounded tired. "And your lab results are in the mail, so get lost."

Sasuke closed the door behind him and walked up to Chouji's side and the examining table. It had been a while since he'd seen a body so… unfresh. "Looks like this guy floated around for a while," he said by way of greeting.

"The hell? Uchiha?"

It was hard to tell, considering that the only visible portion of him was the thin line of skin around his goggles, but he was fairly sure Dr. Akimichi was surprised by his intrusion.

"In the flesh."

Chouji regarded him with an unreadable (invisible) expression for a moment, then with a soft exhalation turned back to his stitches. "Let me finish this."

Sasuke leaned on the table behind him with his arms crossed, and nodded. "Go ahead."

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"Oh," the old woman said in surprise as Naruto appeared around the corner. "I thought you were my grandson, detective. Dr. Akimichi's working late again… I suppose that's what you're about, too?"

Naruto smiled guiltily. "Hai, obaa-san, sorry…"

Far behind him, the door slammed again. The old woman made a shooing motion with her hands and winked. "If Bill sees me with a younger man there's no telling the kind of stories he'll be telling about us. You go say hi to the doctor and the other detective, and don't let them stay too late tonight!"

He waved goodbye as she started off. "Hai, obaa-san. But, obaa-san," he added, confused, "Which other detective?"

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"So. Talk to me."

Chouji began leisurely peeling off his gloves, finger by finger. "The weather was sure awful today. I nearly creamed this minivan on the highway, coming back from a jumper."

"I know it's bad, I rode here in it. I want to hear about Shiki Kaede."

The gloves were tossed into a can marked, 'biohazard', and Chouji pulled two others from a box marked redundantly, "Fresh and new!".

"Are you perhaps a primary on this case, Uchiha-san? Or maybe the chief herself, come to bitch about slow lab times and seeing the body? Do you even know what you're looking for?"

"Yes, I do. And I have twelve-year-old scotch." Sasuke set the paper bags down on an empty table. "And beignets."

"Why," Chouji addressed the ceiling, "do so many people seem to think I am solely motivated by food rewards?"

"Are you still eating powdered donuts at crime scenes?" Sasuke returned.

Chouji waved the question away. "That's entirely beside the point. The point, my dear CSI-jockey, is that however much I might have liked you once, you've been gone for a long time and haven't so much as sent a Christmas cookie tin. Why should I let you see Shiki-san, PI-san?"

The medical examiner rested a proprietary hand on the second body, still draped, and Sasuke realized with a start that this still, cold thing was what remained of the sweetly nervous woman who had said, "I'll call right back!"

He laid down the last of his chips. "The beignets are from the 4th street deli."

Chouji seemed to ponder this. "How fresh a beignet are we talking, here?"

Before Sasuke could answer, the door behind him was flung open with such force it cracked the pane of glass that rested in it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Naruto growled as he advanced on them, almost trembling with rage. "_Just was the_ fuck_ do you think you're doing here?_"

"Naruto," Sasuke said blankly.

He couldn't believe it. Literally_ could not believe_ it that this man, thinner than he had been, with snow melting off his jacket and sliding down leather pants to drip on the floor could possibly be Uchiha Sasuke. Naruto jerked to a stop on the other side of the covered body, shaking, with his fists clenched hard enough that his nails drew blood on his palms. A whirlwind of emotion roiled through him, with enough force to make him feel almost nauseous. Five years. Five fucking years, two of them right here, right in Konoha, he has the fucking business card to prove it, and Naruto still hasn't gotten over it. He hasn't gotten over him.

He should be calmer. He should be showing Sasuke that it didn't matter that he left, that everything was better off without him anyway and that he doesn't hate him, doesn't feel anything for him at all, the bastard. Bastard.

Sasuke felt frozen. There were many times where he'd amused himself wondering what a reunion with this idiot might be like, the things he'd say and how it all might be made better, or a thousand times worse. The moment was here, it was now, and he couldn't say a damn thing. _Naruto…_

Naruto saw the body resting between them, still covered, and knew with a shock like icewater whose it was. What it meant. What Sasuke being there meant.

But he still needed to ask. "Why are you here?"

Sasuke parted his lips, tried to say something, swallowed, then husked, "My client. She was my client. I'm a private detective," he confessed in a rush, like it was some dark secret he'd been keeping. "Kiba gave me the scene description files—"

"It's her eyes, right?" Naruto interrupted, speaking evenly. "You wanted to see her eyes." His hand fell to the table and fisted in the white sheet. "Well, I can help you there."

He ripped off the sheet and the full horror of the woman's death was almost completely missed by Sasuke, because his gaze was drawn irresistibly upwards, to the ruin of her face and the blank, gaping holes that were her eye sockets.

"The nerves and muscle are stretched and torn," Naruto said, watching Sasuke's face empty of all expression. "Like someone just… ripped them out. Sasuke…"

The other man looked up, and their eyes caught and held, black to blue.

"Is it him?"

Chouji flicked his eyes from Sasuke to the body to Naruto, and back. _The hell…?_

Naruto's breath caught in his throat, as he repeated, "Sasuke, _is it him?"_

_Is it who? Who is 'him'? What the hell is going _on_ here?!_ Chouji was starting to sweat from the tension in the room—and damn it! He hated emotional shit! Why the hell did _he_ have to get involved, anyway?

A deathly silence.

And into the deathly silence, Naruto's cell began a dull, repetitive beep.

Slowly, the detective reached for it, and without ever taking his eyes off Sasuke's flipped it open and brought it to his ear.

"Yeah?"

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There were many questions Gaara wanted to ask the mysterious Neji he'd fucked blind in a club not two days before. What the hell did he think he was doing in Gaara's office? Did those bites still hurt? How had he managed to not only get by Officer Dumbfuck but also the locks on Gaara's filing cabinets? Where the hell did he get the balls to sit and _read_ them when anyone could just walk in? Did he have any exotic diseases Gaara should be worrying about?

There were so, so many questions. Why then was it that when Gaara opened his mouth, the only one that came out was, "Glittery lavender eyeliner?"

Neji's eyebrows shot up, and he looked momentarily nonplussed before he let out a short, guileless laugh. "Borrowed from one my coworkers. You may or may not remember her trying to give you a lap dance."

Gaara snorted. "I remember. Was that before or after _you_ tried?"

This time, the laugh was coquettish. Neji turned his attention to the stolen sheets, and began returning them to their folders and stacking it all neatly out of the way. "Before. And I succeeded."

Feeling bolder, Gaara stepped away from the doorframe. "Neji… what the hell do you think you're doing?"

The man finished stacking Gaara's papers tidily to the side, then turned and hitched himself up onto the desk, letting his legs dangle like a child's. He motioned him closer. Gaara came slowly around the desk, and stopped in front of him, expression suspicious.

"First, let me introduce myself properly." Neji looked up into his face and gave an apologetic smile, wondering why he found that permanently-pissed expression so sexy. "Hyuuga Neji, Pulitzer-prize-winning writer and reporter for the Konohagakure Tribune."

"Shi-it," Gaara murmured, rocking back from him and shoving his hands into his pockets.

"It gets better. I cover crime, and I just got myself assigned to the murder of a certain Shiki Kaede."

Permanently-pissed became murderously-pissed. "The fuck?"

As close as they were, Neji wondered idly that if by sitting there, he was putting his life in danger—like a child sticking his hand through the bars of a tiger cage. "You're listed as a primary, and your picture got taken outside the scene. I saw it. I saw you." It had been a definite plus to find in one printed face first a lead on his story, and second that the man he'd been fantasizing about for the better portion of two days was _not_, as Tenten had sarcastically suggested, a shoe salesman/crazy ax murderer.

Gaara growled, "And you ran right over here to see if I'd slip you case files for your juicy story?"

In response, Neji reached over and picked up the nameplate from the desk facing Gaara's, holding it out to him. "Actually, detective," he said coolly, "I came to visit my darling cousin." _To pump her for information about you, to get her to give me your address and phone number, and maybe to make her ask what your sign_ _is._ (3) "Imagine my surprise when I find the entire building deserted and one lone officer standing between me, and all of this." He gestured at the pile of papers to his right.

Gaara took it, ran a finger over the letters. "Hyuuga. I can see it now." He looked up, eyes still narrowed. "You guys have the same—" _really very_ _pretty_ "—eyes."

Actually, Neji had a very pretty everything. Timid little Hinata couldn't hold a candle.

"The eyes are family trait." Neji held out his hand for the nameplate.

Gaara leaned in to put it back and remained in that position, planting his hands on either side of Neji's hips and saying, tautly, "I can and will see you prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if you put anything you found in those papers in print."

"Understood."

"Good. But what are you planning now?"

Neji shrugged, a graceful, fluid movement, and fought not to lean away from Gaara's looming presence. "What can I do except ask questions?" he asked quietly. "You can answer, or not answer, as you wish."

Gaara shrugged and stated, "Investigation is ongoing, and we are doing all in our power to find the one responsible." He smirked, then found himself caught in Neji's eyes again and flushed. Damn it.

Making sure Gaara was watching, Neji slowly licked his lips, reaching for his notepad, then the pen in his hair. He arched his back a little, accidentally-on-purpose widening the spread of his legs, and pulled the pen out, shaking his head so that his hair fell around his face. He brought the pen up between them, to his mouth, and uncapped it with his teeth. "Go on," he said huskily, inordinately pleased at the poleaxed expression on the detective's face. "Start with the removal of the victims' eyes, and how it may or may not relate back to the Uchiha case five years ago."

At that, Gaara actually blinked a few times and shook his head, like a man trying to clear water from his ears. He kept his eyes to the side. "I'm not telling you a damn thing," he stated firmly. Neji loved the wash of color on his normally pale cheeks, and was leaning in to touch him when Gaara abruptly looked back and they were suddenly staring at each other with less than an inch between them.

There was a brief pause, in which both men silently weighed the pros and cons of continuing.

In the end, it was Gaara who closed the gap. He touched his lips to Neji's once, softly, and whispered. "But I want to know what you know. Tell me." Each movement of his mouth had their lips brushing, silk over velvet. Neji gasped a little and let Gaara deepen the contact into a slow, full kiss, felt Gaara's hands slide down his legs to the outside of his knees, where he tugged them further apart and forward until their legs tangled and their bodies touched from lips to thighs in a warm, solid line.

"Tell me. How do you know about the eyes, Neji? What's this about Uchiha?" Fingertips began a slow exploration of his body, and Neji groaned quietly in pleasure.

"Mmmm. Research. Leaks. Bribes." Gaara ran his tongue to his ear and blew, and Neji shivered at the unexpected sensation. He had to say, however much he enjoyed hot jungle monkey sex, there was something to be said for the gentler heat that rose in him now, unhurried and teasing.

Gaara was saying something else, but Neji wasn't quite able to wrap his mind around the words because he was a little distracted by the detective's teeth, and the feel of Gaara hardening against him, and of himself hardening in response, and then how _moving_ just made the whole sensation that. Much. Better. With a throaty chuckle, Gaara stilled Neji's rocking hips and asked, "I thought you were supposed to be seducing _me_ for information?"

"This works too," Neji stated primly, if breathlessly, head falling on Gaara's shoulder. "Bring on the rubber hoses." (4)

Gaara laughed darkly and started to say something, but suddenly twitched and clapped a hand to his side. Neji watched curiously, wondering if he'd have to revise his assumption on crazy ax murdering, as Gaara broke away, slapping violently at his pockets and finally digging out a glowing, vibrating phone.

He glared at the number, then at Neji. Neji didn't take it personally.

That permanently pissed look was back as Gaara flipped open the receiver and snarled, "_What_?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes you did. Why?"

He stared at the floor. "Well, fuck me. Yeah, I'm coming. Address?"

He made quick jerking motions with his hand and Neji hurriedly held out his forgotten pad and pen. Gaara yanked them away and scribbled something, then said, "Got it. See you there." He hung up with a curse, running a hand back through his hair. He glanced up at Neji, then away.

"Another murder?"

Gaara nodded. The flush of arousal wasn't gone from his cheeks, nor was the evidence of it gone from the front of his pants, but the moment was ruined. Neji sighed, and made to scoot off the desk… but paused, as he studied Gaara's face. "Another murder like Shiki Kaede."

Gaara scowled. "Did I say that?"

"You didn't have to."

"You're not coming."

"Did I ask to?"

"You were going to." Gaara leaned back against another desk and folded his arms defensively.

Neji stood up; like this, they were almost of a height. "I can be an asset. I know more than you about this thing already, and people will talk to a reporter. No one talks to cops."

Gaara thought of his day in the district and shrugged angrily. "Yeah? People talk to cops when their other choice is getting arrested."

Neji waved it away. "I'm not asking to see the scene, I don't need that in my dreams. Just let me help you with research, give me access to police files, and when you wrap it up, give me the break." He walked toward Gaara, putting a hand on his arm and feeling the muscle contract under his touch. "I won't breathe a word to anyone. I won't print a word more or less than you tell me to."

Gaara jerked his arm away. "No deal."

Neji responded by wrapping his arms around Gaara's neck, and smirked into that glowering face. "But, I don't have a car. And I don't imagine the buses or taxis are running in this weather. However will I get home?"

"I could lock you up with the drunks downstairs," Gaara growled, the irritated sound making a pleasant rumbling sensation against Neji's chest. He made to move away, but Neji kept his hold and he jerked to a stop. "I can't waste any more time with you. I need to get to the scene!"

Deliberately, Neji let his arms drop, hands sliding down Gaara until they rested against his chest. "_Please_ take me with you," he said meekly. "If you do, I'll give you what I have, and if you don't like it enough to keep me on," and here he pressed a single biting kiss to Gaara's jugular, "we can keep this strictly unprofessional."

Gaara groaned, but not in pleasure, and thrust himself away from Neji. He spun on his heel and Neji grinned, grabbed his coat and trotting after him.

He made sure to smile and wave at the befuddled officer as they passed.

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"Where the hell is my car?!"

If Sasuke had felt slightly less shell-shocked, he might have been tempted to laugh at Naruto's misfortune. "You parked in the tow-away zone."

"For fifteen fucking minutes! There's no _way_ some city tow company jacked my car in under fifteen minutes!"

Chouji was still downstairs putting away Shiki Kaede and packing his 'bag'; that is, loading the medical examiner's van and calling in his techs. He wouldn't be ready for another thirty minutes at the soonest.

"You'd feel better thinking it was stolen?" Naruto whirled to him, but Sasuke held up a hand.

"Do you want me to give you a ride?"

Naruto shouted, "I'd rather ride with—with—"

"Hitler?" Sasuke suggested. "Baby seal killers? I don't see anyone else offering."

Naruto swallowed, hard, and choked out, "Fine."

Sasuke nodded. "Fine."

Then he paused. "Wait. Fine?"

Naruto gave him a grim little smile. He had his shoulders hunched against the cold, and under the thick swirl of snow he looked somehow dimmer. Smaller. "I can be mature when I need to be, Sasuke. Give me a ride. It doesn't mean I've forgotten what you did, or that I've forgiven anything." He sighed. "We'll go, we'll see. If… this is him… then you are officially hired as a civilian consultant and you'll work with us. No questions asked."

Sasuke just looked at him. "If this is him, then I'll do what I wan—"

He was caught completely off-guard when Naruto slammed him up against the icy wall of the morgue, and colored lights exploded behind his eyes as his head struck unyielding cinderblock. "You will _not_," Naruto said, blue eyes glittering in deadly seriousness. "You will work with the police, you will make all your moves only with police sanction and you will not, you will _not _attempt to find him on your own, ever. If you don't agree, I'll catch a ride with Chouji now and freeze you out of every part of this I can. Understand me?"

What was wrong with him? While Naruto raged and threatened, the only thing Sasuke could think was, _he looks so beautiful with snow in his hair. _

After a short pause, Sasuke nodded; but he knew in his gut that this was one promise he was not going to be able to keep. He could feel the same trap closing in on them, and he was powerless to stop it.

Naruto released him, and after an awkward moment where neither of them could quite look each other in the eye, they came to the mutual silent decision to begin the walk to the front parking lot.

As they came up to his girl, Naruto was startled into saying, "Wait, a _motor—_?" But Sasuke just took the helmet and thrust it roughly at him. "You wear it."

Naruto wasn't done staring, eying the motorcycle with a healthy dose of apprehension. "That thing looks dangerous. I've never ridden—anything… ah..." He seemed to recall he was mad at Sasuke. "Maybe I should call Sakura."

Sasuke wiped off the seat and straddled the bike, hammering her on and watching Naruto's eyes widen as she roared to life beneath him. "You're going to take Haruno Sakura to a crime scene?"

Naruto still stood there, staring uncertainly, and Sasuke let out a loud, exasperated sigh. He opened his mouth to remind Naruto that he'd agreed to his conditions already—but choked on the words when Naruto clambered on behind him and miracle of miracles, wrapped his arms gingerly around Sasuke's waist. Sasuke shivered, but that could have been just the cold.

"You'd better not kill me, bastard," he heard him mutter before Naruto pulled the helmet down. Unseen, the Sasuke let his eyes fall closed for a moment.

It was a loaded question, if this was indeed, 'him'.

"I'll try not to, idiot."

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**A/N:** The chapter felt short, because there were only two scenes in it, but I took out my ruler and it's really much longer than the last one… in the next chapter, things will start to pick up. Somebody else disappears, the star-crossed lovers make up a little, etc.

Dead Doc – popular slang for a doctor who works exclusively on dead people. Murders on the Rue Morgue – a short detective story from Mr. Edgar Allen Poe, featuring M. Dupin.

1: (Plainclothes) – Plainclothes (not-in-uniform) cop. He means Gaara. 

2: (Branch Davidian) – those quasi-military religious weirdoes who holed up in a church in Waco, Texas, then got shot up (women, children and all) and burned in one of worst SNAFUS in FBI history. Definitely not a group of people who would trust the government ever again, if there were any left.

3: (signs) – "Hey, baby, what's your sign?" That kind of sign. I could have gone Japanese and put bloodtype, but I think that's even more obscure. Right? Oh, I forgot I was talking to the otaku generation.

4: (Rubber hoses) – I'm not sure where this phrase originates from; evidently, the police used to beat people with… rubber hoses…? Anyway, it's a form of torture for information.

Obaa-san/'Baa-chan is not Tsunade. Myeh. If you need her to be a non-original character, she can be the nameless old hag from various background shots.

Read? Review!


	5. The Chief

**THE BADGE**

Chapter Four: The Chief

eggads_horace  
» Fandom: Naruto

» Rating: M

» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP  
» Classification(s): Humor, Action/Adventure, Drama, Horror, Mystery

» Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations  
» Pairing(s): Sasuke/Naruto, Neji/Gaara, Shikamaru/Temari… nobody else, yet.

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A/N: And the murderer is…?

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Chapter Four: The Chief

He guessed that he'd always known, really.

Sasuke was slowly freezing from the inside out, heart cold and ice forming on his lips. Naruto's arms around his waist might have belonged to a stone statue, for all the warmth they gave him, and the two rode the emptying streets of Konoha in complete silence.

The streetname Naruto gave him was close, no more than ten blocks away. It took them all of fifteen minutes to reach it. In that fifteen minutes, Sasuke felt those five meaningless years of separation, of preparation and sacrifice and hollow victory fall away, and he was as uncertain, as unready as he'd been before.

He'd always known that it wasn't over.

Ever since Otogakure, and Orochimaru, and even the fire. Why else had he stayed? He'd known. He just wouldn't have been able to keep living, _knowing_ it was true. So he'd pretended it wasn't.

And now Sasuke was paying for it—

Because he had no leads, no idea what was coming or what to fumble for in the dark.

Because the man with his arms wrapped tight around Sasuke, his legs framing Sasuke's where they rested against the bike's powerful engine, felt as far away and insensible as the moon.

Because he made the last turn and saw a street he knew very well, bathed in the red and blue wash of light from marked police cars and an ambulance.

He drifted to a stop some twenty feet away, eyes taking in the scene, while behind him Naruto eased off the helmet. His breath plumed out like smoke through the drifting flakes.

"This is it," he murmured, cop's eyes scanning the dark street, lingering on the bars and comic book shops. "You can bring the bike closer, but it will be a few hours before we get approval and I can bring you inside. The victim's on the—"

"Eighten floor. Apartment 808B." The cold was getting the better of him. He was starting to shiver hard now, and folded his arms against it. He felt, rather than saw, Naruto's narrowed gaze on the back of his head.

"Sasuke?" he said, slowly. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

Sasuke stared up at the windows of the apartment. He knew that on the kitchen sill, a sugar bowl and a rather temperamental African violet rested. "Single female victim."

Naruto grabbed his shoulder. "Sasuke. Who?"

"Hebi Karin." Sasuke felt his teeth start to chatter. "My secretary."

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"Who th' fuck's that?"

The question was addressed mostly to himself as he eased his car up to the curb, but Neji leaned forward in his seat and said, "Damn, but I am good. Uchiha Sasuke in the flesh."

"Really?" Gaara leaned forward to get a better view as he pulled his keys out the ignition. Skinny guy. Pale face and dark, dark eyes. He was staring at the ground, leaning on the seat of a bike while Uzumaki stood opposite him with his fieldbook flipped open, writing busily. The detective said something without looking up, and the man gave a short, brusque answer.

Beside Gaara, Neji was still talking. "Jesus, I haven't seen Sasuke in years. Maybe not since high school, and even then—" Gaara wasn't listening. He had popped the trunk and was climbing out of the car to grab his kit. Neji scrambled out and fell into step behind him as he slammed the lid closed and crossed to where his partner stood on the powdery sidewalk.

"Uzumaki."

Without turning, the detective held up a finger. "Wait a sec, okay? I'm getting a statement. This is—"

"Uchiha Sasuke. Why do we need a statement from him, exactly?"

Naruto glanced back at him, expression guarded. "The deceased has been tentatively identified as receptionist and general secretary of Uchiha Detective Agency. Sas—Uchiha-san was her employer."

Gaara arched an eyebrow. "Well, isn't that a happy coincidence. And he just happened to be wandering around the site?"

"No," Naruto shot out. "He…"

"He what?"

Naruto looked uncomfortable. "He drove me here. I'm going to ask the chief to sign him on as a civilian consultant."

"You need a private detective to help you do your job?" Gaara drawled.

Naruto flushed. "It's—it's not like that. And if we're pointing fingers, who the hell is _that_?"

Gaara had almost forgotten about his own little problem. He stole a glance at his one night stand turned extortionist, who smiled ingenuously back. No help there. "He's, uh, Hyuuga Neji. Hinata's cousin," he added lamely.

"Reporter for the Trib," the man added blithely, and Gaara gritted his teeth. "Nice to meet you, Detective."

Naruto got the look all cops shared when confronted with member of the independent media; many people might wear a similar expression if a cockroach crawled out of their cereal bowl. "Re-eally?"

Neji opened his mouth, but Gaara beat him to the punch with a curt, "Can I talk to you?" to Naruto. His partner frowned, but shrugged and flipped the notebook closed. "Stay here," he said to the man on the bike. Uchiha gave a barely perceptible nod, and the two detectives withdrew to the lawn of the apartment complex and safely out of earshot.

Neji watched for a moment as Naruto folded his arms and Gaara began speaking with a pained expression, hand to his head.

"'_Akatsuki Ringed'_."

He turned back to Sasuke, but it might as well have been the parking meter talking. The man hadn't moved an inch; it was hard to tell if he was even breathing.

"That's me. How's it been, Sasuke?"

The corner of the other man's mouth might have twitched. "Interesting."

"I've heard," Neji said quietly. "I've even written about it."

"It was a good article."

"Hm?"

"The one on Akatsuki."

"And the one on your brother?"

Sasuke's eyes flicked up to his and bore in. "I didn't read it."

There was definitely something going on here. His reporter's nose, numb as it was in the cold, told him that Sasuke had not only already connected the dots, he was starting to believe the impossible. If it was impossible.

"You know, all my sources had Uchiha Itachi as being stone dead in a mysterious fire, two days before that story broke."

Sasuke just looked at him.

"Well? Either he's dead or he isn't. And if anyone should know, it would be you."

Sasuke smiled a little. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? As far as I know, Hyuuga, he's dead."

"Then why are you here?"

Sasuke's eyes gazed past him, into some dark and nebulous memory. "Maybe he just didn't burn long enough."

There was a short silence. Neji very carefully chose his next words, picking and discarding several questions. "Sasuke… Sasuke. I—"

There was a rather interesting noise, the kind you might get if you used a sledgehammer to tenderize meat. Neji was suddenly staring at an empty bike seat and a fist thrust, karate-style, through the space where Sasuke's blank face had hovered in the dark. His schoolmate was on the ground, for the first time looking somewhat human as he clutched his jaw and stared around wildly, flat on his back in the powder.

Neji followed the fist to a face (cheeks and nose red, flyaway blond hair sticking out in all directions, murderous expression in green eyes the color of sea glass), then a body (clad in a lumpy red bathrobe and flannel pajama bottoms), down to feet, where he was confronted with the silliest, loudest pair of orange fuzzy bunny house-shoes he had ever seen in his life.

He… knew this woman.

His gaze wandered back up to her face as she loomed over the fallen man, reaching over the bike and grabbing him by the throat of his jacket to haul him back up to face level. Neji frowned to himself, thinking hard as she whispered poisonously, "I promised that if I ever saw you again, you little piece of shit, my only wish was to get in one good punch, just one, and I'd be happy for the rest of my fucking life."

She cocked her free fist, and Neji rubbed his forehead with his knuckles. Who?

"But you know what?" she growled into Sasuke's rather dazed expression. "I think I need two."

"Sannin Tsunade-soutaichou (1)?"

Neji regretted he'd spoken; the slow turn of her head towards him, her flinty eyes and crazed hair all recalled the gorgon Medusa. "_Yesss_?" she snarled.

_Just keep talking._ That had always been his credo; just lay on the charm and never stop pushing and eventually, well_ eventually_ you'll get somewhere. Suddenly, he wished his credo went more along the lines of, _keep your head down and when they say "Duck," don't pop your head up to listen for quacks, right?_ Wide smile stretching his numb face, Neji found himself offering his hand and almost snatched it back in horror. "Allow me to introduce myself. Hyuuga Neji, Sannin-soutaichou."

"Any relation to my Hyuuga Hinata?" she asked. Her wrathful expression did not waver. Sasuke felt around for his bike seat and gripped, taking some of the pressure off his windpipe.

"That lovely woman would be my cousin, soutaichou."

"Ah. I see."

"_Chief…_" Sasuke wheezed out.

Her head whipped back to the unfortunate man and she growled, "Like hell, _'chief'_, you little rat bas—"

"Soutaichou?"

Her mouth shut, then opened, with deliberate care. Without turning to look at him, she finally ground out, "And what might I be able to do for Hinata-san's cousin tonight, Hyuuga-san?"

He smiled brightly. "There's been some insinuation that Shiki Kaede's death might be related to this latest incident, and I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on the connections between the two murd_erps—_?"

The last word came out a bit garbled, as someone behind him applied a hard and expert chokehold. "Are you fucking _crazy?_" that same someone hissed in his ear.

Out of the corner of his eye, Neji saw Gaara's blond partner step forward with a look equal parts resignation and weariness.

"Chief, please let go of Sasuke. I brought him."

Tsunade looked at the detective, then at Sasuke. Neji wiggled a little as Gaara tightened his hold, and thought, _Wait. Wait. What was __**that**__ look?_

Then she dropped him. With a curse, Sasuke caught himself on the bike and managed to stay upright.

"You brought him," she stated flatly.

"Yes, ma'am," the detective said, gaze steady. Neji was still preoccupied with the _look_. Yes, it had definitely been a _looking_ kind of look.

She looked down at Sasuke, who was gingerly probing his mouth. "He brought you?"

"I drove him," he corrected, voice rough. A thin trail of blood from his split lip oozed down his chin. "From the morgue."

"And what exactly were you doing sniffing around my morgue, Uchiha Sasuke?"

Sasuke winced as he experimentally rotated his jaw, then gave her a glare of his own. "I was looking at Shiki Kaede. She was my client before she was your dead body."

Although his vision was becoming a bit blurry from lack of oxygen, Neji saw the blond cop stiffen out of the corner of his eye. The chief's face darkened and her mouth worked, but again no sound emerged.

Then her eyes slid back to him.

"And what," she snarled low her throat, "Is _your_ story, Hyuuga Neji?"

Gaara gave a warning squeeze and let him arm drop from around Neji's neck. He stepped out to the side. "He… I—"

Hell, Neji thought as Tsunade's eyes focused on them like baleful lasers. "I persuaded Detective Sabaku that my considerable research into the Akatsuki group and the related Uchiha murders of five years ago would be an asset to this investigation. Our intent was to approach you for civilian consultant privileges."

He saw Gaara shoot him a surprised glance, as if astonished anything so tactful could have issued from his lips.

"Denied," she said shortly. "No reporters."

"Of course," Neji continued as if she hadn't spoken, "standard guarantees of utmost discretion would apply. I have worked as a civilian consultant previously and have some exp—"

"_What-part-of-'__**no**__'-did-you-not-understand_?" she asked, words bitten off in swift staccato. "No civilian consultants." Her sweeping glare encompassed all four of them, hot and angry and not a little homicidal. "No sharing, no special privileges. Nothing."

"Chief," Naruto interjected, but a heavy gloved hand on his shoulder brought all of their attention to Chouji and behind him, his small army of white-suited med techs.

"As much as I hate to break up this little love-fest, we have a lovely girl upstairs missing a few essential body parts. Chief? Can I borrow these two?" Neji could practically see the subtitles forming in the way the examiners brows knitted: _Why the hell is it always drama, drama, drama with you people?_

Interesting. Neji filed it away for later, along with the looking look.

"Chief," Naruto said quietly. "This newest victim is most likely Sasuke's secretary, Hebi Karin."

She just looked at him. "Go. Work. Both of you. Your civilians stay here."

As he turned to go, Gaara shot Neji an angry, uncertain look. Neji made a small shooing motion with his hand; he could handle this. He _would _handle this.

Naruto was trying to share a similar exchange with Sasuke, but the man was still staring at Tsunade. After a moment the detective turned and followed Gaara and Chouji into the garish red-blue, red-blue light and into the building.

Tsunade's face was losing the florid color temper had brought it and she appeared to be thinking, lower lip caught between her teeth. Her rage had exaggerated her size; he was surprised to note that she actually rested a good six inches shorter than he did, and a few more shorter than Sasuke. When she finally did look up it was to pin them both with a very sour glare.

"You two, come with me."

-

-

-

Down the street by a block and a half, an innocuous and entirely forgettable foreign model car was parked. The interior was so uniformly dark it was impossible to tell if it was occupied or not, but, on a night like this, the chances were that it wasn't.

The sudden cherry-red glow from the end of a lit cigarette defied the odds.

-

-

-

Loud, happy crunching noises were the only sound in the darkened and soundproofed room, apart from the quiet whirr of the projector and the occasional slurp of flat cola from a supersized cup. Enlarged to fill the viewing room's wall, the feed from the four security cameras of the elevators in Shiki Kaede's building played out in front of Kiba in glorious Technicolor and inescapable dullness. People got on, people got off. People got other people off. Kiba watched in drowsy horror as a grey-haired society matron got down on her knees in front of her much younger companion and got busy as Elevator 3 rose to the eighteenth floor.

He let his head fall back against the chair and stared at the ceiling, where a large brown water stain marred the speckled tile. "This sucks," he told it. It remained impassive. "I could be working on an extradition from Tahiti. I could be at our second crime scene. Hell, I could be home drinking eggnog with that new receptionist. Instead I'm stuck here, watching wrinkle porn."

A sympathetic huff came from under his chair, and his hand was prodded gently by a cold, wet nose.

"Yeah, what do you care? You're warm. You're fed." Kiba yawned, and began scratching Akamaru's ears. "Dumb dog."

However close they'd been in school, Naruto, Sasuke and Kiba had drifted apart a bit after the academy, the two of them fast-tracking themselves as star officers in Homicide while he chose a leaner existence in the K-9 corps, something he'd never regretted. He spent his first few years training and being trained by Akamaru, then a few working Vice in another precinct. And while he was racking up drug busts and obedience trial trophies in blissful ignorance, Asswipe Uchiha was dragging Naruto deeper and deeper into some godawful mess Kiba still didn't understand.

When Tsunade-soutaichou had called him, a hair-thin quiver of desperation in her voice, he'd dropped everything (well, almost everything. Akamaru got scooped up on his way to the car) to come to Konoha. He didn't regret that, either.

When he'd gotten the call, agreed to her terms and packed his bags to move to the big city, seen that face again after so many months away, it had been a reminder of something that was always in the back of his mind when he thought of Naruto, even now. _Especially _now, now that Uchiha had popped up again like a bad penny.

It was silly. It was stupid. It was completely apart from his genuine love for Naruto as a friend and the general sense of exasperation the man tended to inspire in all who knew him. It was something he was surprised to realize was on his mind, when he did realize it was there. It made him feel vaguely guilty to be thinking about it now, when Naruto was probably really suffering… but the two of them together were the whole problem in the first place.

The question was, quite simply, this:

What is it, exactly, that turns a straight man with no previous observable thoughts or inclinations towards gayness, into a raving homosexual nympho who, if rumor was to be believed, would fuck a classmate he didn't even particularly like through the bathroom floor? And then (forgive him, Naruto) cause that man to fall for that classmate so hard that he's nearly suicidal when the aforementioned classmate drops his ass to run off on some vendetta?

Kiba returned his gaze to the elevators, noting with some relief that the older woman and her paramour had moved on. He loved Naruto, like he said. He'd listened to Tsunade's request. He'd looked around him. The people in his old precinct were his friends, _are_ his friends even now, and they were and are perfectly nice. Some things just trump that. So, after a temp job to give his sudden appearance some credence, he made the move permanent.

He loved Naruto, but he knew he didn't love him romantically. Nor did he find him sexually attractive. But they connected so deeply on so many things, cared about so many of the same things. They'd been friends since grade school. So what was it? What did it?

He'd gotten to Konoha, gotten to his new desk, and there waiting for him had been Detective Aburame Shino: tall, dark, with a certain stillness about him that said he was watching the world much more closely than it was watching him.

His eyes had met that dark, inscrutable gaze, and the niggling thought in the back of his mind had—not _jumped_, exactly, but suddenly he was very aware that he was thinking it, that he'd been thinking it nearly continuously since the day before when he'd told Naruto he was staying and the man had thrown his arms around him like a child. _What would do it?_

And to his surprise and utter confusion, something inside him had looked at Aburame that first time and had said, **that**.

It hadn't been a magical epiphany. The Pride Parade fairy hadn't snuck up and smacked him with the pink pimpstick of gayness. But all the same, even though nothing had changed and there was literally _no fucking way_ one guy of all the freaking guys he'd been looking at (all right! He admitted that he was looking!) was enough to turn him fruity, he'd blushed so hard his skin felt crisped.

The man had stared, and for a moment Kiba had been afraid he wasn't going to let it go—

but they'd ended up ignoring it entirely and carrying on with getting acquainted. Kiba wasn't suddenly tongue-tied, wasn't even really embarrassed (he told himself). He quashed the whole bungled tangle of awkwardness and a strange excitement down and functioned normally, which was for him functioning noisily and completely without restraint.

When someone reminded him about it months later, he'd laughed and said, "It was love at first sight, right, Shi-chan?" Aburame had merely stared at him. Kiba had changed the subject.

There was something. In some dark part of his soul he knew and admitted it. There were times he still just felt so damn awkward, and he wondered what it was about his partner that could make him so edgy.

Gradually, Detective Aburame-sempai became Shino, who liked American beer and film noir movies and had a weird, weird thing for bugs. They were partners, and they did what partners did. When they got too drunk to get home, they snuck in and slept in the precinct cells, Kiba on the top bunk, Shino on the bottom. When Kiba accidentally knocked over Shino's posh antfarm, the livid detective had stood over his partner and made him pick up each and every one of the 1,584 ants from the office carpet. When Akamaru broke his leg in a gopher hole, it had been Shino who drove the hyperventilating Kiba and his whimpering dog to the veterinarian's. They ate pizza and watched college football on Sundays, and stayed the fuck out of each other's private lives. It was good. Kiba liked it that way.

Then Shino ruined it.

He'd asked why.

Kiba rubbed his eyes tiredly with one hand, speeding through the footage of the empty elevators, and resuming play when a bored-looking socialite appeared, stabbing the button for the eighth floor with inch and half long coral nail. The other hand delved into the striped box on the desk beside him, fishing out a cold, greasy handful of original recipe and tossing it into the shadowy recesses under his desk. It never hit the floor, and the loud crunching noises resumed.

"Chicken bones are bad for dogs."

Kiba resisted the urge to shriek, and once he'd gotten his breath under control swiveled slowly to face the object of his frustr—no. Ruminations. He even managed to summon a smile from somewhere.

"Akamaru's smart. He knows not to swallow them."

_They were drunk again, at least this time for good reason and on higher quality booze. Even the normally imperturbable Shino's eyes were glassy with the celebratory champagne of their ascension to second star detectives. _

_Kiba supporting Shino, they made their way to the bed where Kiba intended to dump his partner like a sack of potatoes. "Heave-ho," he laughed, and shoved. Shino hit the bed like a felled tree. _

"_Ow, fucker," the detective mumbled into the comforter. He rolled over onto his back, half-closed eyes on the ceiling fan. "Kiba?"_

_He'd turned to go, and almost toppled himself turning back. "Wha'?" he slurred._

"_You remember your first day, right?"_

"'_Course."_

_He'd been swaying dangerously, and without his consent his body suddenly dropped onto the bed next to his partner. Shino turned his head, gold eyes fathomless in the dim room._

"_Al'us wanted to ask…" he mumbled. _

_Through the heady warmth of the bubbly, a sudden icy flash of apprehension had Kiba's voice quavering. "A-ask what?"_

_Those eyes, heavy lidded and sleepy, stared into him like they could see the panicky little thoughts behind Kiba's eye: no, no, _please_ don't ask. _

_But he did. _

"_Why did you blush?"_

"What's all this?"

"Just looking through the elevator tapes, playing Sweet Haruko."

_Why did you blush?_

Shino gave a slow, crooked smile and asked the obvious. "'Sweet Haruko'?"

_Why are you blushing?_

Kiba turned his back on him. "Like this," he said, a little too brightly, clicking through the times he'd flagged, bringing one up on the screen. "The building is a little classier than your average motel, but it's still got the same patrons. See this threesome?"

Shino leaned in over his shoulder, a little too close for comfort. "One of them's a prostitute?"

"You get a nose for it in Vice. Watch them—there, see her body language?" Kiba was trying very hard not to notice Shino's. "Her clothes are expensive, and her make-up is well done. But she has no jewelry, no purse, and her hair color is too brassy to be from anywhere other than a box." There were other things, in the way she smiled and subtle relation of space between the three. It was hard to explain all the tells to someone who didn't understand terms like Sweet Haruko.

"I guess the eighteenth precinct taught you something after all," Shino said, practically in his ear, and a hot little shiver tried to work its way down his back. Was the man doing this deliberately?

And wasn't that a scary thought…

Because even if Shino didn't seem to remember any of it, _"Why did you blush?"_ wasn't the only question he'd asked that night.

Kiba cleared his throat, and leaned a little away from that warmth. "I was just a lowly member of the canine unit. My old sergeant could probably tell you what district she walks just by looking."

"What about that one?"

Shino's attention had been caught by a darker woman in a long black coat, refreshing her lipstick on her way into the elevator as the threesome exited. The woman identified as a professional caught the other's eye, and winked.

"Catch that?" Kiba murmured. "A little recognition among peers. What's more, _I_ recognize her. But from where…?"

"Done much streetside shopping under the red lights, have you?" Shino asked dryly. He sat down and pulled his chair closer to the monitor.

Kiba waved a hand vaguely, his eyes never leaving the screen. "That's not it." He checked the digital timestamp on the video, a growing excitement tightening his throat. "Right in range for the murder."

"And the right floor," Shino added as the woman exited the elevator car.

Kiba started typing, discomfort from his partner's nearness falling away at the prospect of the chase. Akamaru sensed the change in his mood and moved his head to rest it in Kiba's lap, eyes rolled up to watch his face.

"We need to find when and where she left," Shino breathed.

"I'm working on it."

"Do you remember where you've seen her yet?"

"…yeah."

After a few more seconds of furious mouse movements, Shino prodded, "Well?"

"Hn?"

"The whore, Kiba, where have you seen her?"

"Oh," Kiba muttered distractedly as he isolated the feed from the woman's elevator. "The last time I saw her, she was performing one of the more gymnastic Kama Sutra poses with Shiki-san's husband."

(2)

-

-

-

Sasuke took a sip of his tea, swirled it around his mouth, and swallowed convulsively. He was reasonably sure that Tsunade would not have laxative or otherwise dangerous herbal brews lying around for his chance visit, and so could drink with confidence. Seated next to him, Hyuuga followed his lead and sipped; his small grimace into the steaming cup went unnoticed.

Even if she couldn't poison them outright, she could give them the most disgustingly floral crap she had on hand.

Across the table, Tsunade faced them over her own mug, idly stirring in sugar—apparently unperturbed by their presence in her home. The silence stretched uncomfortably as she continued to stir, spoon scraping the bottom of the mug with a soft metallic screech.

The mystery appearance of the chief of police in her robe and slippers had been explained when the woman had snapped out the order to follow her and had lead the two down the street to a smaller gingerbread Victorian. Her instructions from then on had been monosyllabic. In. Sit. Here. Milk?

He hadn't realized how close they'd been, and felt a small thrill of horror when realizing how many times, visiting Karin, he'd been risking sudden death.

Hyuuga was gazing around as well as he could out of the corners of his eyes, drinking in the space revealed under the ancient yellow kitchen light. Sasuke didn't dare let his eyes stray far from his former chief's face, but he knew the place well enough. Classic furniture and faded country colors, and something spicy and sweet drifted from the potpourri bowl on the coffee table in the living room. Kitsch and checked curtains made appearances here and there, concessions to the owner's status as a fifty-plus-year-old woman, but the overall effect was classic and feminine. The entire house was like that, everything matching and just a bit too small.

It made his skin crawl.

The clock on the wall opposite him, almost lost in the flowery wallpaper, was the loudest thing in the room. The heat turned on with a rumble and quiet _whoosh_. The chief finally tapped her spoon on the rim of the cup and set it on her saucer, then folded her hands around the mug. Her nails were short and unpainted, and her knuckles were scarred. She'd never been afraid of getting her hands dirty.

"You." Tsunade looked up suddenly and pinned Hyuuga to his seat with a glance.

The man started. "Sannin—?"

"You haven't known Detective Sabaku for very long, have you?"

The man frowned, but admitted, "No, soutaichou."

"He has a violent temperament and something of a handicap that makes him a bit of a liability from a PR standpoint. Do you know what that handicap is, Hyuuga-san?"

The frown remained. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I follow."

"Detective Sabaku hates humanity, Hyuuga-san. He is not in our department to serve the community, and in fact has told me more than once that the community 'can fuck off and die'. As a facet of this, he reacts badly to all kinds of physical contact, including contact with his own sister, my lieutenant."

Sasuke's brows lifted, imperceptively.

"Soutaichou?" Neji still sounded puzzled.

"I find it an interesting coincidence, then, that the man he brings to a crime scene and who then proffers himself as an 'expert consultant', is the same man Sabaku feels comfortable touching so intimately…" and here, for the first time, Tsunade gave her trademark dark Cheshire smile. "… and is currently sporting a nice, new hickey the size of my fist."

Neji slowly raised a hand to his neck and Tsunade leaned back in her seat, legs crossing. "What can you possibly offer that might tempt me to hire you?" She shifted to stare at Sasuke as well. "Either of you? A goddamn fuckbuddy reporter and an ex-cop who, as far as I am concerned, is as much a _suspect_ as 'expert consultant' material?"

Sasuke absorbed that as Neji shot back, "If you read the news at all, soutaichou, you know my name and my work. I'm an investigative reporter with nearly a decade of experience and a Pulitzer prize, not some hack working for the National Enquirer. My relationship with Detective Sabaku began before I was assigned this story, and it has no bearing on my interest in this case. I can help you." He paused to take a breath. "With my previous research and sources, which are extensive, I personally know more about the probable history of these cases than anyone but the murderer. If we consider how much they resemble those presumed committed by Uchiha Itachi—"

"We're not."

'_Presumed committed'. What a_ _lovely __term._

Neji's jaw clenched. Then, "They never found his body."

Sasuke, eyes tracing the grain of the cherrywood table, felt the side of his mouth curl into an expression caught between a grin and grimace._ Because it burned to ashes, along with three blocks of riverside property. _

Neji unconsciously leaned in. "He might have gone into hiding. Belonging to Akatsuki, he certainly had the resources. _The pattern is the same_. Young women, mutilation and torture."

_Eyes. _

Sasuke didn't realize he spoken, until Tsunade echoed him, quiet tension in her tone. "Eyes?"

She had been waiting for this moment. Her eyes remained on her tea as he looked up. She deliberately lifted her cheery yellow mug and drank, and spoke with it still held close to her face.

"Is this why you've crawled back out of whatever rock you've been under, Uchiha? I'd think," she said with pleasant certainty, "That _you_ would know he was dead, better than any of us."

He guessed he'd always known, really.

"I've wondered."

Hyuuga closed his damn mouth for once, and dropped his eyes to his tea. He appeared to be divining the secrets of the universe from the leaves floating in the bottom, but Sasuke could practically see his ears perk.

"Ever since Orochimaru."

The chief did not react to the name of the man who had once been one of her closer friends. She had the air of a well-camouflaged adder in the grass, on seeing some small and oblivious mouthful passing by.

"Naruto stopped me from knowing for sure."

"He stopped you," Tsunade mused, eyes still on the depths of her mug, "from standing over a burning body in a warehouse that was also burning, and about to collapse on both your heads. Yes," and here she set her mug down on the table, not hard, but with a solid noise that spoke of cold fury. "You used your authority as an officer of the law, your partner and your precinct to hunt down a man, _your brother_, who was never convicted of any crime. You nearly died doing it. And Naruto nearly died with you."

She lifted her eyes, and Sasuke understood that _this_ was what his former chief found unforgivable.

The clock, a replica in the 1950s style, ticked loudly as the heat turned off with a low mechanical groan. Hyuuga might have been a lawn ornament for all the sense of life he gave.

Sasuke's tea was cold now, but he drank it anyway to wet his lips. He set the mug down, and said, "I never—"

Three sharp knocks rang out like gunshots in the small space, and Hyuuga actually jumped in place.

"It's us," came Gaara's gruff, muffled voice.

Tsunade was still gazing meditatively at Sasuke, only the whiteness of her fingers where they gripped her mug belying her calm expression. For a moment, her gaze traveled between her two unwilling guests, heavy as a lead weight.

"Come in."

-

-

-

Naruto brought his hand down and rubbed his knuckles, stamping his snow-caked boots a few times on the wide WELCOME that greeted them at the doorstep. The house was a lone island in an ocean of snow, the street and sidewalk barely discernable from the lawn.

"What are you waiting for?" Gaara growled. He rubbed his arms spasmodically, tucking his fingers into the crooks of his arms and rocking forward. "Open the fucking door!"

"Just praying for a miracle," Naruto mumbled.

Gaara's lips twisted into a dire smile. "Amen."

"Gaara…"

"Mmm?"

"…nothing." Naruto grabbed the knob and pushed open the door.

A wave of cinnamon-scented warmth rolled over them and dragged them in, an undertow of sweet fragrance. Naruto heard Gaara sigh appreciatively as he slammed the door shut on the seeking winter wind.

"In here."

The two detectives glanced at each other. Gaara made a questioning face, and Naruto shrugged and shook his head. He couldn't tell anything by her tone.

They walked through the petite dining room to the kitchen, where Sasuke and Gaara's reporter faced the chief across a low fruitbowl with a doily base. Naruto very carefully avoided looking at Sasuke, and gave his full attention to his chief. She stood, sliding her chair back against the wall and clasping her hands together.

"Boys," she began, "We were just finishing here. Hyuuga."

"Yes?"

She tapped her chin with her folded hands. "You will be given clearance, Hyuuga-san."

"Th—"

"I'm, not, done," she sang out softly. The reporter shut his mouth with a snap.

"You will not be paid." She took her mug and brought it over to the sink, turning on the faucet and idly rinsing the leaves from inside of it. "Your participation means that you will not report on nor give material to others to report on this investigation for its duration of activity, up to and including any arrests. This ban will be lifted at time of trial." She set the mug on the counter and turned to fact them all. "Your participation is limited to consultation only. There will be no undercover operations. There will be no fieldwork." She gave a thin smile. "Believe it or not, I have read your work, and with great interest. What you lack in tact you make up for in sheer tenacity, and your talent for persuasion and deception continually amazes. If you fuck with me, you'll just wish I'd killed you. And Detective Sabaku will shortly thereafter find himself on the wrong end of an Internal Affairs investigation."

Beside Naruto, Gaara shifted uncomfortably.

"Are we clear?"

"Crystal," the man responded bemusedly.

"Uchiha."

Sasuke, his gaze never having left her, said nothing.

Naruto, who had been tensing for this moment, blurted out, "Chief."

The woman who had been like a mother to him looked up, eyes suddenly tired.

"Could I talk to you?"

"Detective—"

"Chief—"

"_Detective._"

He closed his mouth.

She walked toward him, then past him, into the dark foyer. Naruto turned to follow her without looking at the other guests.

When his eyes adjusted, he saw her sitting on the steps leading to the second floor and went to her.

"As a detective of mine, you are recommending to me," she began softly, evenly, "That I allow you to involve a civilian in an investigation. That is, by itself, questionable. As my detective, you are recommending a man, an ex-officer who has proven to me professionally that he is unreliable, untrustworthy, and a genuine danger to those around him. A man who is, beyond all doubt in my mind, at least once a murderer." Naruto would have spoken at this, but she laid a hand on his arm, and continued more gently. "More than that, you are asking me to let you hurt yourself." Her expression was almost tender.

"Chief…" She held up a hand.

"If your decision as primary on this case is that this man will be an asset to your investigation, I will abide by it. But I will do everything in my power to prevent you from coming to harm because of it. If I think it necessary, I will remove you from the case."

She held his eyes unblinkingly. He nodded, slowly.

"Both of the victims knew him, chief. The methodology was pretty well publicized, but Sasuke's involvement was not. Whoever is doing this knows he was involved, and knows what these murders will invoke for him. They're targeting Sasuke as much as they're targeting the women around him."

"Then watch him. Watch him every second of every day and _don't_ let him surprise you again. Naruto." She smiled, a little, then rubbed both hands over her face with an heavy sigh. "My God, but this is such a horrible idea. Nothing good will come of it. How can you _do_ this to your poor old 'baa-san?"

Naruto smiled wistfully into the dark. "I didn't see it coming, either."

-

-

-

Sasuke's stipulations were explained in a few short, curt sentences on Tsunade's return to the room, with an extra that surprised Naruto.

She plucked the receiver from the wall, dialed a number, and slid the ringing phone across the table to Sasuke. "The answering machine will pick up. Say your name. Tomorrow at beginning of the first shift, we'll hold a task force meeting in the second floor conference room. Say I want them there. Then hang up. Got it?"

Sasuke gave her a cool stare, but repeated into the receiver what he'd been told. When he'd ended the call, Tsunade took the phone back and replaced it. With her back to them, she said, "Now get out, all of you. It's late, and you've got somewhere to be at 0700."

They got out.

A fitful wind moaned through the buildings, flakes driving down in heavy sheets and muffling the noise their trudging made. The snowfall had made the streets invisible but for tire tracks, and by mutual agreement they moved there and walked in the ruts made by those who had braved the blizzard.

"It's two o'clock," Neji suddenly muttered. "I need to get things together and print copies. Some of my files are in my desk at the press building. Gaara?"

"Is that a request or a d-demand?" the man responded grumpily, teeth chattering.

"Pretty please?"

Gaara shrugged, as much as he could with his hands buried in his pockets and shivers wracking his entire body. "Whatever."

He gave Naruto a slidelong glance. "Either of you t-two want a ride?"

After a pause, Naruto spoke to the ground. "Can't leave the bike. And I'm babysitting, per the chief's orders."

Sasuke said nothing.

They reached the car, still parked next to the morgue van. Naruto got a medtech to promise to tell Chouji about the meeting, while Gaara and Neji drove off into the snowstorm with a dour, "Merry fuckin' Christmas," from the detective.

"It's impossible to ride in these conditions."

He'd expected something like that, but he still said, "You were doing just fine before."

"The snow wasn't as deep, earlier." Sasuke put the bike in neutral, and rolled it forward experimentally. He began to walk away down the street, and Naruto hesitated a bit too long before he caught him by the elbow. Still, the contact sent a little jolt of reaction up from his fingertips.

The man kept his gaze down, not meeting Naruto's eyes. "Let go."

"No. Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Sasuke gave him his eyes then, and Naruto almost wished he hadn't. They look glazed and dead, like marbles in a face made of bone china. "Go home, Naruto. I'll be at the meeting tomorrow."

"I'm not—" _I not letting you out of my sight. The second I take my eyes off you, you'll vanish. I don't trust you. I_ _**can't**__ trust you, not anymore. _"I'm not letting you go anywhere alone. Your employee and your client are dead."

"Tsunade thinks I did it."

Naruto's hand spasmed where it gripped Sasuke's arm, then slowly released him. Sasuke watched him for a moment, then turned fully to face him. The streetlight flowed over his shoulders but left his face in shadows, so that his next words seemed to well up from someplace dark and far away. "It hadn't occurred to you?

"She may not really believe it, not yet, but she'll spend tonight wide awake because you're the grandchild she never had, and by morning she'll realize it's the most logical explanation." His tone was smooth and matter-of-fact, alarmingly so, but his words were starting to come faster and faster. "I'm already a murderer in her eyes. Who better," he continued, "would know the pattern, the modus operandi? Who links the victims?"

"Sasuke," Naruto finally broke in. "No."

Sasuke gave a little chuckle and Naruto flinched. "A man already suspected of murder and arson and who, more importantly, is still alive and kicking makes a much better suspect than ashes. Who knows? Maybe he had something to do with it the first time around. It might even be hereditary… he's just taken five years longer than his brother to go completely insane."

"Sasuke," Naruto said, almost sighing the words, "not you. Never you."

"You don't know that. You don't know me." The words came as quick and violent as a slap.

A small, nasty part of Naruto wanted to ask Sasuke if this was a confession, as the words, "Damn right I don't!" jumped to the tip of his tongue.

Another part saw… deeper.

Naruto _had _known him, known him inside and out, backwards and forwards, and the Sasuke standing in front of him might have a few more scars but it looked like he was still the same stupid bastard who mistrusted everything and believed the world was going to hurt him unless he hurt it first. The only person he'd ever babbled to like this had been Naruto. Even if he didn't realize it, he was practically begging for reassurance, and with that realization came a flash of insight.

He wouldn't have called it an epiphany; no hallelujah chorus descended and he sure as hell didn't see any chariots of fire. But the stranger in front of him became, for an instant, the man he'd loved. For that, Naruto could swallow the angry words and say only, "You're not insane. And you're not going anywhere alone. The sooner you understand and accept that, the sooner we can get out of here."

Sasuke was still. Snowflakes had settled in his hair and on his clothes, and as Naruto watched a hard shiver dislodged a melting clump from the collar of his jacket. He must be ridiculously cold, Naruto realized. He was all in leather, for God's sake. He added, "There's no point in splitting up. By the time we both made it home in this, it'd be time for the task force meeting."

Sasuke moved his head a fraction and suddenly his face was flooded with light. He was staring at Naruto with what was almost despair in his eyes. But he only said, "My apartment is at the other end of the city."

"My place, then. It's closer to the precinct building, anyway." Naruto turned in the right direction and began trudging forward through the knee-high accumulation of snow. After a moment, Sasuke appeared at his side and they walked with their backs to the wind, the bike between them.

They had reached the end of the block before Sasuke asked, "On Fourth?" The apartment they'd shared.

"No. I moved."

After that, the silence closed in over their heads like deep, still water.

He still avoided that part of town, the restaurants and stores they'd used, the parks and playgrounds and places they'd walked and known. Hell, he'd even avoided cereal aisles for months because it made him remember Sasuke's brief but torrid love affair with Frosted Cheerios, and there was nothing more pathetic than a man driven to drink by a good part of this balanced breakfast.

Sasuke had been operating his detective agency in the city for nearly a year before Naruto had come across his business card. Then he'd begun avoiding that part of town, too. If he remembered correctly, the office was as far from their old neighborhood as it was possible to be and still remain in city limits.

Avoiding me? he silently asked the man next to him. Avoiding memories? Or was the rent cheaper?

The blizzard felt as though it had softened. The snow still fell, but listlessly, and was no longer driven in sheets before the wind. They passed beneath lamp after lamp, the electronic buzz loud against the whispering susurrus of snow over snow (3). Their footsteps had a soft, powdery crunch to them, the wheels of the motorcycle a low, continuous grinding as they rolled.

In forty minutes they had turned onto his street. His apartment building looked like a gingerbread confectionary, the well-meaning but tasteless occupants of the bottom floors having expressed their seasonal cheer in seas of plastic and miles of filament.

"This is it," he said to Sasuke, pointing out the building. "I'm on the third floor, so the bike…" He looked up a smaller side street as they crossed it, and froze.

"Sasuke," Naruto said softly, eyes staring ahead into the whirling flakes. He felt a slow, creeping chill that had nothing to do with the cold. "Sasuke. Stop."

Sasuke slowed beside him. "What?"

Naruto swallowed, hard.

There… was his car.

There was his _car_, parked neatly and inconspicuously in its habitual spot at the corner. The bumper was exactly perpendicular to the parking meter. There was barely any snow on it.

"Naruto, _what is it_?" Sasuke repeated.

In response, Naruto drew his gun. Sasuke let out a low curse and drew his as well, their safeties clicking off simultaneously as Naruto began moving low and slow towards the vehicle. Abandoning the bike on the curb, Sasuke fell into step behind him, turning in crouching pirouette to sweep the street. "_What is it?"_ he hissed.

"Car. Cover me."

While Sasuke stood facing the street in a loose three-point stance, Naruto approached the battered hulk of his ancient Chevy. It looked somehow sinister in the dim streetlight, even with its mismatched side panels and rusted wheel wells. Patient. Waiting. Alien.

He had a flashlight now, and shone it down the barrel of his nine-millimeter into the dark windows. Empty.

"Is this any car in particular?" Sasuke asked, still staring down the street with his weapon trained on the ground. His tone was dry, but underlying tension gave the words an edge.

"_My_ car." Naruto began to feel very carefully along the undercarriage, then the underside of the bumper. "Someone took it from the morgue… and put it here."

Sasuke was quiet for a moment.

"Naruto," he said very softly. "_Your trunk is open._"

It was cracked a bare centimeter, a small piece of dark fabric protruding from the gap. He stared at it from his position by the passenger side back wheel, then slowly rose. One hand reached for his cell.

The other reached for the lid.

"Don't—!" Out of the corner of his eye, Naruto saw Sasuke whirl around as he pulled the trunk open, jacket wrapped around his fingers. Heard him suck in a breath and hold it for a beat.

Two beats.

And close, too close, a car roared to life and wheels spun with a wild scream. Sasuke's pistol snapped around and the rest of Sasuke followed as the beam of Naruto's flashlight swept up and silhouetted the barest suggestion of a vehicle against the night. Then the red glow of taillights whipped around a corner and was gone.

For a moment, Naruto thought Sasuke would go after it. His gun was up, his body tensed to move, and the motorcycle was lying just a few yards away. Naruto would be left alone on this empty streetcorner, and it would fall to him to wait for help or for something to come for him in the dark.

Then Sasuke turned and pinned him with a deathly glare. "What's in the trunk, Naruto?"

Naruto took too long answering, and Sasuke repeated the question.

"… no obvious body parts, if that's what you're asking."

The glare never wavered.

Naruto looked into the dark recesses, and saw something glint.

Sitting on top of the bits and pieces of crime scene kits, water bottles and tangled jumper cables was a small, dainty box. It had tasteful black ribbon tied around it and into a bow. Without having sensed him move, Naruto was suddenly aware of Sasuke beside him, bracing his gloved hands on the edge and leaning forward to stare intently at the contents.

Mutely, Naruto pulled a pencil stub out of his pocket and used the sharpened end to carefully tease the bow apart. The tip hovered at the edge of the lid, then at Sasuke's hoarse "Do it," carefully nudged it open.

There, nestled in the cotton backing, was a worn necklace. Naruto's pencil slipped under the loops of gold and drew it gently up, and small pearls glowed dully in the harsh beam of the flashlight.

They shared an expressionless glance, and by silent agreement Naruto eased the necklace off his pencil and flipped open his cell to punch in Dispatch.

Whoever the murderer was, they had decided a morgue secretary made fair game.

-

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-

"Sai. _Sai_." She giggled. "_Sai!_"

"Mmm?" The man murmured into her collarbone, breaking the suction of his lips with a wet pop. "Did I mention how much I _love_ this dress? Strapless is so sexy…"

"'M going in now."

"Yes, let's."

Sakura giggled again, drunk as a skunk and giddy with it, hallway revolving around her in majestic sweeps of light and dark. She gave a little female groan as his leg rubbed up between hers, and tried to pull out of his arms. "Sai! Bad boy!"

He moved in closer, and grunted when a well-placed punch to the stomach knocked him back. "Oww, you _hag_," he sighed into her ear.

She giggled again, and tugged his head up by the hair, so she could see his face. So she could remember _why_ she wasn't letting him in.

God, she was horrible.

"_No_. _I'm_ going in. _You're_ going home." She kissed him, chastely, and ducked back when he tried to catch her lips with his own. She turned and fumbled for her keys with her good arm, and Sai embraced her from behind, placing a few soft kisses along her exposed neck. He barely avoided a swing from her cast, and good-naturedly grumbled, "Tease."

Something in Sakura flinched even under the several Long Island iced teas sloshing through her system. She covered it by noisily shoving her key in the lock and twisting.

Door opened a crack, she turned to look at him. Unlike her, he was still in office clothes, cheap suit rumpled and shirt partially unbuttoned with tie dangling out his pocket. Her coral lipstick brightened his normally pale face, one loud print centered on his cheek.

For a moment, the present and the past converged in her eyes, and she turned away hastily before he saw her expression.

"I'll see you tomorrow morning, then. We have to review the Mikami case before our two o'clock meeting, don't we?"

Sai let out a melodramatic sigh behind her. "Yeah, yeah. Tomorrow."

She shoved the door the rest of the way open as his footsteps sounded down the hall, and closed the door on his retreating back. She let out a short breath she'd been unaware she was holding and rubbed her forehead, kicking off her shoes and walking barefoot into the darkness of her small apartment. She opened the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water and twisting off the top as she used the edge of her cast to tap the blinking button of her answering machine.

-

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A/N: Dear Lord, the drama! Go read "Hot" before you get tragedy-poisoning.

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Index:

1 – (Soutaichou) – Head captain/chief. I'm unsure as to whether this obviously military term could or should be applied to Tsunade, but I decided to run with it. Run, run.

2 – (Kiba x Shino) – I think that three main pairings may be too much. It feels… cluttery… so! Kiba might get his own side story to blush in.

3 – (susurrus) – Awesome word. I want to get it tattooed somewhere.

**Days:**

Prologue: Monday Night

Chapter One: Tuesday

Chapter Two: Wednesday

Chapter Three: Also Wednesday

Chapter Four: Mostly Thursday, with some very late Wednesday and scattered flurries.

**Cast of Characters:**

Murderer: …?

Victim(s): Shiki Kaede-san, Hebi Karin

Detectives (by partner): Uzumaki Naruto and Sabaku Gaara, Inuzuka Kiba and Aburame Shino, Yamanaka Ino and Hyuuga Hinata, Nara Shikamaru (and Sabaku Temari)

Lieutenants (by partner): Sabaku Temari (and Nara Shikamaru), Hatake Kakashi and -?

Chief: Tsunade

Reporters: Tenten, Rock Lee, Maito Gai and Hyuuga Neji

Uchiha Detective Agency: Uchiha Sasuke, Hozuki Suigetsu, Jugo (and then there were three)

Medical Examiner's Staff: Akimichi Chouji


End file.
